4 ms·

All Children Are Supposed to Be Proficient. What Happened?

31 points by tokenadult 12y ago

phaus 12y ago
>But, he adds, "I think it's safe to say, and we anticipated this early on, that policymakers erred. They turned an aspirational goal that inspires support, into a target for accountability, meant for consequences." Unfortunately, this is how nearly every department of the government views pretty much anything. That is why the regularly fail, and its also the reason why intelligent, talented people rarely want to work for the government.
- pjmorris 12y ago
  "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure." - Goodhart's Law [1] - or, originally- "Any observed statistical regularity will tend to collapse once pressure is placed upon it for control purposes." [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart's_law http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart's_law
  - ahomescu1 12y ago
    Similar to that one is Campbell's Law: "The more any quantitative social indicator (or even some qualitative indicator) is used for social decision-making, the more subject it will be to corruption pressures and the more apt it will be to distort and corrupt the social processes it is intended to monitor." 1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campbell%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campbell%27s_law
- superuser2 12y ago
  This is pretty much literally what "accountability" means. When you say you want an "accountable" government or support politicians who talk about "accountability," measuring things and then firing people or cutting funding based on those measurements is exactly what you're asking for. Accountability is maybe the solution if the problem is laziness. If your problem is anything else, greater accountability won't solve anything.
  - phaus 12y ago
    When I talk about accountability in politics, I want accountability for the near-universal corruption. I want the 500+ member royal family we have established in the United States to follow the same rules as everyone else, and to go to prison when they don't. As far as accountability in public programs, now that you have made me think about it a bit more, I suppose the greater issue is the fact that the federal government is absolutely terrible at coming up with metrics. Whenever they measure in order to take accountability, they seem to focus on the wrong things. I think metrics can be helpful in some cases, but in our education system, it would have to be an extremely complicated system, else we would just end up preparing children to take unhelpful standardized tests like we do now.
spindritf 12y ago
Nothing happened. Educational achievement remains largely heritable. GCSE scores were obtained for 13,306 twins at age 16, whom we also assessed contemporaneously on 83 scales that were condensed to nine broad psychological domains, including intelligence, self-efficacy, personality, well-being, and behavior problems. The mean of GCSE core subjects (English, mathematics, science) is more heritable (62%) than the nine predictor domains (35–58%). Each of the domains correlates significantly with GCSE results, and these correlations are largely mediated genetically. The main finding is that, although intelligence accounts for more of the heritability of GCSE than any other single domain, the other domains collectively account for about as much GCSE heritability as intelligence. Together with intelligence, these domains account for 75% of the heritability of GCSE. We conclude that the high heritability of educational achievement reflects many genetically influenced traits, not just intelligence.[1] Even a major educational reform is just tinkering around the edges. Of course, people don't want to hear that so politicians will lie and give us exactly what we want. In this case, illusion that school matters a lot and they can significantly improve it. When it inevitably fails, we will blame them and hang our hopes on a different curriculum, "focusing on growth," getting ivy grads into teaching, or maybe just game the stats to tell ourselves it worked. Next up, all new episode of democracy in the Middle East. [1] http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2014/10/02/1408777111 http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2014/10/02/1408777111
- Hermel 12y ago
  Playing devil's advocate: in a perfect world with perfect schooling for everyone, wouldn't you expect a very high level of heritability due to the fact that this is the only source of inequality left? That's like cancer becoming the primary cause of death - not because cancer is getting more dangerous, but because other, competing causes are eliminated.
  - spindritf 12y ago
    Yeah, in a world with perfect schooling... but either way that means there is little room for improvement.
  - ZeroGravitas 12y ago

31 points by tokenadult 12y ago

phaus 12y ago

>But, he adds, "I think it's safe to say, and we anticipated this early on, that policymakers erred. They turned an aspirational goal that inspires support, into a target for accountability, meant for consequences." Unfortunately, this is how nearly every department of the government views pretty much anything. That is why the regularly fail, and its also the reason why intelligent, talented people rarely want to work for the government.

pjmorris 12y ago
"When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure." - Goodhart's Law [1] - or, originally- "Any observed statistical regularity will tend to collapse once pressure is placed upon it for control purposes." [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart's_law http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart's_law
- ahomescu1 12y ago
  Similar to that one is Campbell's Law: "The more any quantitative social indicator (or even some qualitative indicator) is used for social decision-making, the more subject it will be to corruption pressures and the more apt it will be to distort and corrupt the social processes it is intended to monitor." 1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campbell%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campbell%27s_law
superuser2 12y ago
This is pretty much literally what "accountability" means. When you say you want an "accountable" government or support politicians who talk about "accountability," measuring things and then firing people or cutting funding based on those measurements is exactly what you're asking for. Accountability is maybe the solution if the problem is laziness. If your problem is anything else, greater accountability won't solve anything.
- phaus 12y ago
  When I talk about accountability in politics, I want accountability for the near-universal corruption. I want the 500+ member royal family we have established in the United States to follow the same rules as everyone else, and to go to prison when they don't. As far as accountability in public programs, now that you have made me think about it a bit more, I suppose the greater issue is the fact that the federal government is absolutely terrible at coming up with metrics. Whenever they measure in order to take accountability, they seem to focus on the wrong things. I think metrics can be helpful in some cases, but in our education system, it would have to be an extremely complicated system, else we would just end up preparing children to take unhelpful standardized tests like we do now.

spindritf 12y ago

Nothing happened. Educational achievement remains largely heritable. GCSE scores were obtained for 13,306 twins at age 16, whom we also assessed contemporaneously on 83 scales that were condensed to nine broad psychological domains, including intelligence, self-efficacy, personality, well-being, and behavior problems. The mean of GCSE core subjects (English, mathematics, science) is more heritable (62%) than the nine predictor domains (35–58%). Each of the domains correlates significantly with GCSE results, and these correlations are largely mediated genetically. The main finding is that, although intelligence accounts for more of the heritability of GCSE than any other single domain, the other domains collectively account for about as much GCSE heritability as intelligence. Together with intelligence, these domains account for 75% of the heritability of GCSE. We conclude that the high heritability of educational achievement reflects many genetically influenced traits, not just intelligence.[1] Even a major educational reform is just tinkering around the edges. Of course, people don't want to hear that so politicians will lie and give us exactly what we want. In this case, illusion that school matters a lot and they can significantly improve it. When it inevitably fails, we will blame them and hang our hopes on a different curriculum, "focusing on growth," getting ivy grads into teaching, or maybe just game the stats to tell ourselves it worked. Next up, all new episode of democracy in the Middle East. [1] http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2014/10/02/1408777111 http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2014/10/02/1408777111

Hermel 12y ago
Playing devil's advocate: in a perfect world with perfect schooling for everyone, wouldn't you expect a very high level of heritability due to the fact that this is the only source of inequality left? That's like cancer becoming the primary cause of death - not because cancer is getting more dangerous, but because other, competing causes are eliminated.
- spindritf 12y ago
  Yeah, in a world with perfect schooling... but either way that means there is little room for improvement.
- ZeroGravitas 12y ago