
All Children Are Supposed to Be Proficient. What Happened? - tokenadult
http://www.npr.org/blogs/ed/2014/10/11/354931351/it-s-2014-all-children-are-supposed-to-be-proficient-under-federal-law
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spindritf
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
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.

~~~
ZeroGravitas
The paper explicitly says this (that changes to equalise the educational
environment will thereby increase heritability) which makes it odd for it to
be cited in support of the thesis that the educational environment doesn't
matter, because academic success is so heritable.

------
phaus
>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.

~~~
superuser2
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
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.

