
Stay focused - New research on how to close the achievement gap - denzil_correa
http://www.economist.com/news/books-and-arts/21569680-new-research-how-close-achievement-gap-stay-focused
======
alid
Thanks for posting - it's fascinating to see the results of the KIPP program
down the line! It reminds me of Finland - they have no standardized testing
and less of a focus on pure academic results, and yet they are near the top of
the world for education results. Their entire system is geared towards growing
the resilience and emotional intelligence in each child - psychological
counselling, individualized student guidance, free school meals and easy
access to health care are available for every student. It's more holistic than
a pure academic focus. Resilience and drive - more than anything else it's
what's needed in business, so perhaps this shows it's what's needed in life
too?

~~~
yummyfajitas
It's likely that the good outcomes in Finland are primarily the result of the
student body, not the education system. Non-Finnish students attending school
in Finland tend to perform about 50 pts worse on PISA than Finnish students.

[http://super-economy.blogspot.com/2010/12/amazing-truth-
abou...](http://super-economy.blogspot.com/2010/12/amazing-truth-about-pisa-
scores-usa.html)

~~~
speeder
Be careful, people will claim you are supporting racism ;)

~~~
analog
It is a little racist to see a difference in test scores and assume that it is
'likely' due to race. There isn't much in that post (which is pretty good)
about _why_ the scores of immigrant Finns are lower.

------
mynameishere
_But schools have experience creating classes that raise test scores. Figuring
out the best way to help youths develop “grit”_

Schools have extensive experience developing "grit". Go out to the football
field or basketball court and those same knuckleheads are showing more 'grit'
than anyone in the chess club. The reason they don't have 'grit' with respect
to academics is because they aren't interested. Getting them interested is
mainly fodder for cliche-ridden Hollywood claptrap.

------
dskhatri
The article seems to contradict what I previously read about KIPP [1]. I
thought KIPP also heavily emphasized 'emotional intelligence' going so far as
to giving their students t-shirts emblazoned with the "Don't eat the
marshmallow" slogan. The words refer to the famous Stanford experiment on
delayed gratification.

It seems the article (or Paul Tough) does not provide a balanced, complete
analysis. Perhaps the colleges the kids dropped out of overemphasized academic
achievement. It could be that emotional intelligence plays a role in the long-
term success, of which college may or may not also be an ingredient.

[1]
[http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/05/18/090518fa_fact_...](http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/05/18/090518fa_fact_lehrer?currentPage=all)

------
jamesaguilar
I wonder what he means when he calls persistence and curiosity non-cognitive?

------
tokenadult
Education policy is the issue that drew me to participate on Hacker News,

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4728123>

and I'm glad to see that so many participants, from the founder on to the
newest member, enjoy thinking about and checking facts on education issues.
There is very good research on boosting student achievement in another charter
school network, the Uncommon Schools network

[http://www.uncommonschools.org/our-approach/thought-
leadersh...](http://www.uncommonschools.org/our-approach/thought-
leadership/teach-like-a-champion)

that produced the book Teach Like a Champion.

<http://teachlikeachampion.wiley.com/>

[http://www.josseybass.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-0470...](http://www.josseybass.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-0470550473.html)

Practicing the techniques in that book is improving my own teaching as a
private-practice mathematics instructor.

There are a lot of stupid comments that suggest that the main disadvantage of
the United States is its ethnic diversity, but the real disadvantage the
United States has is low expectations all around, from the most advantaged
students

<http://educationnext.org/when-the-best-is-mediocre/>

[http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-
blog/2012/08/29/lo...](http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-
blog/2012/08/29/look-east-young-man/)

<http://educationnext.org/teaching-math-to-the-talented/>

to the least.

<http://www.ams.org/notices/200502/fea-kenschaft.pdf>

The hypothesis that "race" differences matter most in the United States
educational achievement profile is thoroughly discredited,

[http://people.virginia.edu/~ent3c/papers2/nisbett2012groupdi...](http://people.virginia.edu/~ent3c/papers2/nisbett2012groupdiffs.pdf)

and meanwhile there is abundant evidence--for the rare American who speaks or
reads any language besides English--that school systems in other countries
sometimes provide a better learning environment simply by expecting more of
students,

[http://www.de.ufpe.br/~toom/travel/sweden05/WP-SWEDEN-
NEW.pd...](http://www.de.ufpe.br/~toom/travel/sweden05/WP-SWEDEN-NEW.pdf)

including, by the way, often learning a second language just to receive school
instruction or a third language as a core part of the secondary school
curriculum (both of which were part of my wife's experience in Taiwan when
Taiwan was still part of the Third World). If further research on KIPP and on
The Uncommon Schools network continues to alleviate the effects of the de jure
racism in United States public schools that survived into my lifetime, and
also gives the lie to ongoing excuses for racism, so much the better.

AFTER EDIT: One more point on the subject of international comparisons in
education is that the TIMSS and PISA series of tests don't wholly agree in
methodology,

[http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/brown-center-
chalkboard/posts...](http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/brown-center-
chalkboard/posts/2013/01/09-timss-pisa-loveless)

and hence don't wholly agree in conclusions, although the United States
plainly doesn't do as well in educational achievement as its high level of
spending on public schools would warrant.

P.S. Every time I see a Hacker News discussion of this subject I reflect that
my occupation (supplemental mathematics lessons for advanced learners in
mostly suburban school districts in one of the states in the U.S. with the
highest academic achievement) wouldn't exist if United States schools were
really doing so well for the brightest. See my user profile for more details.

~~~
hammerzeit
You're clearly more of an expert than I am on this (although your tone seems
unnecessarily condescending), but I was hoping you could articulate in a
clearer way:

What's the accepted explanation behind the vast racial divide in scores? Is it
a proxy for poverty? Is it a cultural issue? My understanding is that white +
asian Americans, on PISA tests at least, perform at a level that would put
them in the top 5 countries in the world, were they alone. I'm not interested
in race-based theories -- those seem obviously wrong to me -- but that fact
does seem to stick out. Can you explain what the prevailing theory is? Or
should I be ignoring that data?

Also, do you have data to support your "rare American who speaks or reads any
language besides English" gibe, or was it just offhand snark? The famous Arne
Duncan bit cited people who speak more than one language in their home, and
the only other data I could find was a gallup poll (suspect already) about
people "able to have a conversation in a second language" -- about 25% of
Americans.

EDIT: I should stress that my natural bias is irritation at arguments that try
to layer European policies over American populations. Forget race -- I don't
think it's interesting -- but it seems a lot easier to to design an education
system for a culturally homogenous society than a culturally diverse one. This
is akin to when people were exclusively blaming the American health care
system for a higher mortality rate rather than, say, the massive obesity rate
in this country.

~~~
tokenadult
To answer your specific question, there is a quite long article by Roland
Fryer at Harvard to explain where "race" differences in educational
achievement in the United States began and what needs to be done to further
narrow the divide.

[http://www.economics.harvard.edu/faculty/fryer/files/Fryer_R...](http://www.economics.harvard.edu/faculty/fryer/files/Fryer_Racial_Inequality.pdf)

The early situation during my lifetime is well summed up by a quotation from
_America in Black and White: One Nation, Indivisible_

[http://www.amazon.com/America-Black-White-Nation-
Indivisible...](http://www.amazon.com/America-Black-White-Nation-
Indivisible/dp/0684844974)

by Stephan Thernstrom and Abigail Thernstrom (which is a thoughtful book about
the history of relations between the "white" majority and black Americans).
Its description of public schools in the south sets the scene for today's
legacy:

"The poverty of the South and the blindness of its planter-dominated
leadership to the need for an educated labor force made the region the
educational backwater of the country. School expenditures per pupil in Georgia
in 1940, for example, were 42 percent of the national average; they were even
lower in Alabama, Arkansas, and Mississippi. Those were figures for both black
and white students; blacks of course fared worse than whites. Thus, in 1940,
Alabama spent 3.2 times as much per pupil on whites as on blacks; Georgia 3.3
times as much; South Carolina 3.8 times as much; Mississippi a staggering 7.2
times as much. In the most heavily black counties of the Black Belt (so-called
because of the exceptionally rich dark soil), per-pupil expenditures for black
children were less than one-thirteenth of what was spent on whites. A pamphlet
documenting such inequalities issued by the National Conference of Fundamental
Problems in the Education of Negroes in 1934 observed wryly that 'if we assume
the democratic principle of equal educational opportunity for all children, it
would appear that it takes seven times as much to teach a white child as a
Negro. As Booker T. Washington used to say, it is too great a compliment to
the Negro to assume that he can learn seven times as easily as his white
neighbor.'"

As that book points out, and as Roland Fryer points out in his more recent
publication, today spending disparities are nowhere near that large (although
they still favor "white" students in most jurisdictions), and now cultural
factors and specific school practices are most at issue in the current divide.
But the divide is narrowing, and has narrowed quite a bit in my lifetime, and
there are identifiable improvements in United States schools that could make
it narrow further.

On the language background of Americans, see

[http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/15/opinion/sunday/are-we-
real...](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/15/opinion/sunday/are-we-really-
monolingual.html)

for a recent report, based on the United States Census data, and an earlier
Gallup Poll result

[http://www.gallup.com/poll/1825/about-one-four-americans-
can...](http://www.gallup.com/poll/1825/about-one-four-americans-can-hold-
conversation-second-language.aspx)

with different methodology. I had three grandparents, all born in the United
States, who spoke a language other than English at home. The United States has
long relied on immigrant families keeping their heritage languages (as in the
case of my grandparents' families) to have people in the population who speak
a language other than English. I have been a contract English-Chinese
interpreter for the United States government and other clients. By test, I
reached a high level of proficiency in a second language. But I would see
highly proficient English in use among mixed groups of young people from other
countries throughout the time I lived in Taiwan, and there is no comparable
phenomenon of anywhere near as many Americans who grow up in English-speaking
homes learning a second language of any kind. Singapore, by contrast, has four
official languages from four different language families, has a population
that spoke NONE of those official languages at home as recently as a
generation ago, and yet has achieved good educational results in English (the
sole medium of primary and secondary schooling) during my lifetime. Singapore
is a very diverse country that has been more successful in getting good
schooling results for that diverse population than the United States has.
Similarly, repeating my previous comment here, my wife used a second language
(Mandarin) to receive all of her schooling, and then learned a non-cognate
foreign language (English) beginning in secondary schooling, and so is
genuinely trilingual, a rare condition among Americans in her generation.

------
LDale
My primary concern with the privatization of education is not that charters,
like KIPP, can't and won't educate students effectively and efficiently. As a
teacher I understand that there are many ways in which our educational system
can fundamentally improve.

My worry is that the incentives of private enterprise could very well lead to
an education system that doesn’t strive, as a core mission, to education all
Americans to a high level.

If we did transition to a privately held education system we would, naturally,
need to consider whether or not funding would be guaranteed by the government
(as is currently true, within bounds). If funding is guaranteed it seems like
that cost of education would explode. Private programs would have few
incentives to restrict overhead and procurement costs, as is true in
contemporary military procurements and fee-for-service healthcare delivery
models. Schools would be operating, after all, in a persistent, non-voluntary
market.

A second – and more damaging – possibility (if funding is not government
backed, though it seems likely to take place regardless) is that that private
educational institutions would be incentivized to either reduce the quality of
education provided to low performing (and thereby low-value) students –
perhaps through low-overhead online coursework (which has not yet proven
itself an equal method of educational delivery – see failure of K12 Inc.
online schools) - or to outright reduce the availability of education to low-
performing/low-value students. While this clearly undermines the long-standing
tradition that all children the United States must be provided with an equal
education, we might find a corollary in the current national conversation
regarding healthcare availability, or lack thereof, for the poor.

In this case, it is unlikely that withholding education would carry the same
moral difficulty for the public as restricting healthcare does when a poor
individual comes to the emergency room with a grave injury. As such, these
low-performing/low-value students would likely be allowed/encouraged to drop
out of primary and secondary charter education (which we already see, for
instance through zero tolerance conduct rules, in small charter school
populations of ELL students and students with cognitive/behavioral problems) –
or they would fall onto a governmental supported educational system
specifically tailored to their educational/SES class. It is possible that this
safety-net education system would allow for more specifically tailored
education practices – however, judging by the historically tiered and
inequitable education system we see today (Reese, 2007), (Kozol, 1992) it
seems unlikely that these schools would constitute anything more than a
dumping ground for struggling students.

It is, instead, more likely that these safety-net schools would be highly
stigmatized and exacerbate negative self-perceptions of students’ future
economic opportunities (Ogbu, 1987) while also limiting students access to
academic knowledge and skills necessary to enter a modern workforce (Oakes,
2008). The reframing of the term “public education” to carry the same
connotations as “public house” or “public hospital” is already underway – as
discussed by Lee Raudonis, former executive director of the Georgia Republican
Party.

[http://blogs.ajc.com/get-schooled-blog/2012/11/28/charter-
sc...](http://blogs.ajc.com/get-schooled-blog/2012/11/28/charter-school-
amendment-debate-far-from-over-next-up-in-the-georgia-legislature-redefining-
public-schools/)

If we’re not concerned with education as a primary empowering force for
personal advancement and an initial level playing field for all Americans,
then we can just move along.

For me, as a white/middle class/privately educated k12 teacher – it is
something to protect against.

Readings (in order of use): Reese, W.J. (2007). Public schools and the common
good. In History, education, and the schools (pp. 141-158). New York, NY:
Palgrave MacMillan.

Kozol, J. (1992). Savage inequalities: Children in America’s schools. New
York, NY: Harper Perennial. Chapter 3: The Savage Inequalities of Public
Education in New York (pp. 83-132).

Ogbu, J. (1987). Variability in minority school performance: A problem in
search of an explanation. Anthropology and Education Quarterly, 18(4),
312-334.

Oakes, J. (2008) Keeping track: Structuring equality and inequality in an era
of accountability. Teachers College Record, 110(3), 700-712.

