
Study says standardized testing is overwhelming nation’s public schools - antigizmo
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/study-says-standardized-testing-is-overwhelming-nations-public-schools/2015/10/24/8a22092c-79ae-11e5-a958-d889faf561dc_story.html
======
douche
No shit. Public school is all about teaching to the tests. There's no time to
actually _learn anything useful_ , because everything is focused on bringing
up the state test scores, which influence funding. Not only are you spending
all this time teaching what is going to be on the standardized test, and how
to structure essays and do your work according to what the test graders
expect, but there's the two weeks taken out of instructional time just to take
the damned tests.

So you see everything that doesn't support that goal get stripped back. Home
economics? Shop? History? Real literature? Gym?
Programming/technology/spelling/philosophy? Nope, we're going to spend 80% of
your time honing your five-paragraph essay skills and pushing everybody
kicking and screaming through pre-calc.

~~~
SilasX
Whether that's good or bad depends entirely on the content of the tests. You
have to ask, "is this stuff that a graduate of the system should be able to
do?" If no, then it's fair to criticize them for having to spend time teaching
this, and instead achieve a lower proficiency but teach a broader skill set.

But if yes, then any criticism of "teaching for the test" falls flat: this is
stuff students need to be able to do, and to the extent that you're finding it
hard to do, then you were failing all along, and removing the tests would just
hide that. [1] (Plus, it's not like a student that can't meet this minimum is
going to somehow do just fine in "real literature".)

However, to conclude a "no" answer to _that_ question, you would need to cite
specific questions from the tests, and go on record saying "nope, no reason a
graduate of our system needs to know that, so why are we making sure they can
answer it?"

So I'm confused as to why such testing critics _never discuss_ this crucial
piece of evidence, instead relying entirely on innuendo about suppose dangers
of "teaching to the test".

[1] Which, of course, doesn't means the teachers specifically were the cause;
in the extreme case, if students are literally starving, then you need to fix
that. But regardless, any root-cause analysis must start from the detection of
a failure, irrespective of where it ends.

~~~
ZeroGravitas
"Teaching to the test" generally doesn't mean covering the material that the
test is intended to cover in theory, it means drilling the exact format of
questions, studying previous years, knowing exactly what you can sacrifice
coverage of, how to guess multiple choice questions when you don't know the
answer etc. Basically over-optimizing to fit an imperfect model.

Now, I'm a good test taker generally, and it has always helped me in life, and
I will ensure my children know the rules of the game. But from the perspective
of the country or planet, that's not time and effort well spent, it's a zero-
sum arms-race that could have been better spent.

There's more to this, e.g. the fact that the tests are really testing the
teachers (again very imperfectly), that some people want to privatize
education and so on, but "teaching to the test" is a well known anti-pattern
for good reasons, even though the individual incentives push us in that
direction.

~~~
waterlesscloud
>"Teaching to the test" generally doesn't mean covering the material that the
test is intended to cover in theory, it means drilling the exact format of
questions...

Sure, if you're an incompetent teacher. But then maybe, just maybe, you
shouldn't be teaching at all.

~~~
acdha
You're making a number of bad assumptions:

1\. The test actually covers what's important

2\. The teacher has the time, resources and support needed to fully convey the
material to every student

3\. The teacher and the school are receiving students who are realistically
capable of reaching the expected level

4\. The test results will be interpreted in good faith and used only to help
students and teachers perform better

In the U.S. public education system, years of simplistic fixes have largely
ensured that none of those are true. Instead there are vicious feedback loops:
unprepared students will do worse on tests, which is held against the teachers
and school no matter how hard they were trying, which leads the most motivated
parents to take their kids elsewhere and the best teachers to leave teaching
or find another school or district where their efforts are appreciated. After
a few iterations, the district may close the “failing” school and make life
even harder for kids who now have the same problems plus a more of their day
commuting to a school where they'll probably bear the stigma of having come
from a bad school/neighborhood.

------
epalmer
I'm a parent of a recent college grad and high school senior. Both of my girls
went to a “good” public school in an semi-affluent neighborhood. They take
standardized tests for two weeks each year. Or at least the calendar is
blocked from real work those two weeks. And once done the rest of the school
year is time wasting. So lots of wasted time just for the administration and
post test taking. Teachers routinely complain (in private) about teaching to
the tests.

And yet there are glimmers of hope:

Project based learning in school and after school can make a difference. While
not exactly the same thing, challenge based learning, is making a difference
in a few school districts across the county as well
[https://www.challengebasedlearning.org/pages/welcome](https://www.challengebasedlearning.org/pages/welcome).
My girls participated in FIRST Robotics
[http://www.usfirst.org/](http://www.usfirst.org/) starting with First Lego
League (FLL) and advancing through First Tech Challenge (FTC) and then to
First Robotics Competition (FRC). The best part of these programs is that it
is so much more than STEM. They learn how to solve real world like problems,
do marketing, run the business of the team, work in teams, learn about robot
design, programming and more. As a volunteer in FIRST for now ten (10) plus
years, I have witnessed it transform the lives of more than a hundred kids.

There are other similar programs like VEX, which I know little about, but
support in concept. [http://www.vexrobotics.com/](http://www.vexrobotics.com/)

The biggest challenge with these programs is funding and penetrating the
underserved schools. Of course in the underserved school if kids are hungry
then not much else matters. The same could be said for kids that can’t get to
after school programs for the many reasons that exist like both parents
working, the need to take care of siblings and more.

In my state (Virginia), state legislators and the head of the department of
education are starting to take notice of the impact of FIRST robotics on
outcomes and are talking about funding underserved school programs. Many
robotics team has been lobbying at the state and federal level for just this
cause including my daughter’s team. So maybe next year some funding will be
allocated. In my hometown, Richmond, VA. there seems to be enough passion
among adults that volunteers can be found to staff more programs for project
based learning.

We are also starting to see interest and some action for building and staffing
makerspaces in schools and libraries. This is very exciting since small
projects are also valuable for learning and more affordable. We need
makerspaces across k12 and into colleges and universities.

While none of the above fixes the teach to the test problem, or the
socioeconomic gradient issues, they at least help in some little ways.

------
yummyfajitas
23 hours a year is "overwhelming"? That's 40 minutes/week, assuming a 36 week
school year.

In other news, I'm overwhelmed by brushing my teeth.

Incidentally, since I'm sure a bunch of people will spout the "teaching to the
test" slogan, I'd love it if someone could look at these _real tests_ and
explain how to teach to them without improving student learning. Somehow I
suspect not, because real tests are actually reasonably well designed and
"teaching to the test" is actually just "teaching".

[http://www.cde.ca.gov/ta/tg/sr/documents/cstrtqmath7.pdf](http://www.cde.ca.gov/ta/tg/sr/documents/cstrtqmath7.pdf)
[http://www.nysedregents.org/Grade8/Mathematics/20100505book1...](http://www.nysedregents.org/Grade8/Mathematics/20100505book1.pdf)
[http://www.nysedregents.org/Grade8/EnglishLanguageArts/04261...](http://www.nysedregents.org/Grade8/EnglishLanguageArts/042610book1w.pdf)

~~~
hga
And most of this anti-testing stuff ignores the reason the whole regieme was
established in the first place: too many schools weren't even pretending to
teach their students the most basic of things, including the 3Rs (heck,
phonics vs. "Dick and Jane and Their Running dog Spot" is _still_ being fought
60 years after _Why Johnny Can 't Read_ was published).

I'm certain it's being taken too far without caring about the consequences
(which we could point out as another example of how dysfunctional our public
schools have become, see above, in the latter half of the 20th Century they
simply didn't care if their graduates could read), but graduating from high
school in 1979 I was at the edge of the beginning of this in Missouri. And the
test was simple (well, after the SATs and College Board achievement tests :-)
and covered entirely relevant stuff, things you really should be able to do to
earn a high school diploma.

This in fact has a lot to do with out current insane college finance regime;
the high school diploma became an _entirely_ worthless signal, so when
combined with _Griggs v. Duke Power_ , the non-free for the student college
degree has become the new signal of minimum competence.

------
rdtsc
Another negative side effect is it discourages good teachers. A neighbor told
me how he wanted to be a science teacher in highschool. He shadowed one of the
older science teachers and was basically discouraged by what he found out from
them -- the advice was "you don't get to actaully teach much fun or
interesting stuff, just teach to the test"

Or put it another way, think about the people who would choose to teach
knowing that they'll just be drilling tests all day every day. Think about
personalities that process will select for. And those will be people teaching
your kids.

~~~
matwood
I think it is important to remember why testing came about. Bad schools were
doing so bad that kids were graduating HS without the ability to read or do
basic math. In order to fix a problem this bad, first measurements have to be
taken.

My biggest problem with testing is that it can hold back gifted students.

~~~
rdtsc
But why are most schools spending almost all their time teaching to the test
so to speak. Were all of them miserable failures before?

Why couldn't they just focus on underperforming school and investigagte what
is happening there (probably poverty, crime, bad home environments if I had to
guess...).

I also don't understand the idea of relating budgets to test scores. It is
like they want schools to fail on purpose -- "Looks like you are struggling
here with teaching these kids, ok, well we'll cut your budget, that should
help..."

~~~
matwood
> But why are most schools spending almost all their time teaching to the test
> so to speak.

Is this really problem if when taught the test someone can do general math and
reading comprehension? At that point, teaching the test is teaching the basic
skills we expect a member of society to have. The only problem I have with
teaching the test is it gives a disincentive to push gifted students beyond
the test material.

> "Looks like you are struggling here with teaching these kids, ok, well we'll
> cut your budget, that should help..."

Welcome to the perverse federal government. States handle education so they
could simply tell the feds no, but the feds use tax dollars to twist the
states arms. This is also how highway speeds get set. The federal government
takes a bunch of tax money from the states and then holds it hostage unless
the states implement what the federal government wants. This is one of the big
reasons for people wanting smaller/less federal government.

------
lm______
I worked for a year as a tutor in an elementary school. Even the first graders
are doing six or seven standardized tests every year, plus random additional
tests (including those given by me and my fellow reading tutors, testing every
student in the school three times yearly to see if they qualified to be
tutored).

The kids would even get their scores back too, so would be distraught when
they didn't match up to other classmates who would brag about doing better. I
tutored kids who were behind a bit in reading, so of course my students were
consistently stressed out before the tests and afterwards, they would tell me
how this bullshit test meant that they're "stupid". I had many kids use that
exact word.

The teachers universally hated it too, since they constantly had
administrators breathing down their necks and it severely restricted their
freedom to teach creative, engaging material.

~~~
waterlesscloud
" Even the first graders are doing six or seven standardized tests every year,
plus random additional tests"

Name them. They're standardized, so this shouldn't be a problem for you.

~~~
lm______
DIBELS, MAPS, Common Core, etc. Some of these happen multiple times a year.

I honestly can't remember all of the names, but I can assure you there were
more. I was a _tutor_ \-- I never administered any of these tests -- and it
was three years ago. Just Google "first grade standardized tests" and you'll
find some more, though I can't remember which of those in particular the kids
at my school took. Each state has its own standardized tests too...

To be honest, I enjoyed taking standardized tests when I was a student, but it
became clear to me that for most kids (most of whom didn't have the stress-
free, charmed existence that I had growing up) it's just demoralizing and
useless.

~~~
waterlesscloud
Googled "first grade standardized tests" and not seeing anywhere near 6 or 7
plus more.

Sure you can't remember them all?

~~~
lm______
Yes, I'm sure. Why are you so hellbent on doubting me?

------
tboyd47
I tutor my little brother-in-law sometimes (he's 9), and I like to deprogram
him from public school testing culture as much as possible. I tell him that
when he's with me and he doesn't know the answer, don't guess. Just say, "I
don't know." And I test him, too. I ask him questions he can't possibly know
the answer to, or questions that have no right answer, just to hear him say,
"I don't know." And then I congratulate him for being honest. I do this
because I know that public school encourages him to do the exact opposite. At
least when I was in school, they never want you to leave a question blank.
They always tell you to guess. If you guess, and get the answer wrong, you get
partial credit (IIRC, 25%), but if you leave it blank, you get no credit. Why
they do this, I have no idea. Maybe they feel like if the child guesses, they
have a 25% chance of getting the right answer, so that means the school has a
25% chance of getting the federal money, so therefore the child should get 25%
credit for at least filling in the bubble. Makes sense in kind of a bizarre
way. But in the real world, there is no 25% credit for guessing.

~~~
336f5
Test motivation differs from person to person, so if you don't encourage
everyone to at least try every question and guess, you'll get differences in
scores which don't reflect the child's difference in knowledge (which is what
the test is trying to measure) so much as willingness to try or guess. This
willingness can differ systematically so you might get drastically lower
scores for poorer children than they should. (This is one of the reasons
schools like psychologists to do IQ tests, because they can spot when a child
isn't trying or is deliberately underperforming.) So that's one reason.
Another reason is that it's rare to have _no_ idea whatsoever; even if you
feel entirely uncertain, you can still often guess at above chance rates,
showing that you did know more than nothing. Forced-choice methodologies
expose that knowledge and again make the tests more accurate, because more
items means more effective at distinguishing between students.

(Imagine a test of 10 questions, each substantially harder; one student
manages to answer correctly up to question 5 before starting to feel uncertain
and refusing to answer any more, and a second gets up to question 6. How sure
are you that #1 knows less than #2? Now imagine that they instead 'guessed' on
the remaining 5 questions, and #1 got 3/5 right and #2 got 1/4\. Now how sure
are you? Haven't you learned something from this apparently 'useless'
guessing?)

> But in the real world, there is no 25% credit for guessing.

You can no more refuse to guess in the real world than you can refuse to make
choices, take actions, or let time pass.

~~~
tboyd47
I'm not saying there aren't any valid reasons for doing it. I'm just saying
the there's a "meta-lesson" there that has to be corrected. I want all my kids
to grow up knowing that there's no shame in saying "I don't know," if you
honestly don't know. Life is not a sounding smart contest.

~~~
336f5
>> Why they do this, I have no idea.

> I'm not saying there aren't any valid reasons for doing it.

> I'm just saying the there's a "meta-lesson" there that has to be corrected.

And I'm saying that your meta-lesson is not a good idea as it will tend to
teach underconfidence. The real world does not always let you off with a "I
don't know"; you may not know to some high degree of certainty whether a
cancer treatment is a good idea, but nevertheless you must decide whether or
not to do it.

------
xacaxulu
In the broader context, when it comes to math, reading and science, teens in
the U.S. rank 36th in the world. Students in Shanghai are rated the best. What
are they doing right that we could be doing better here in the US?

[http://cnycentral.com/news/local/new-survey-ranks-us-
student...](http://cnycentral.com/news/local/new-survey-ranks-us-
students-36th-in-the-world---how-do-we-improve?id=978874)

~~~
acdha
Those comparisons are misleading because they don't control for the
demographics of students coming in. The United States does a decent job for
affluent students but we have a relatively percentage of lower class students
taking the same tests, which means that the effect is significantly smaller
once you compare demographically matched students from different countries.

The elephant in the room is poverty: that's well known to have massive
educational drawbacks and most of the countries which outperform the United
States have much higher social safety nets. It's hard to study when you have
untreated medical problems, are hungry or perhaps not sleeping in the same
place every night or even having a safe place to sleep at all. That's a
familiar litany to many U.S. public school teachers and it's something which,
unlike standardized testing, has been the subject of ongoing cuts for decades.

I think that this is something we should address for many reasons but I do
want to note that poverty doesn't directly explain the entire gap, although I
suspect that the problem is exacerbated by the social instability caused by
multi-generational poverty which is harder to directly account for:

[http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/assessing_the_assessments/201...](http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/assessing_the_assessments/2014/03/poverty_PISA_scores.html)

    
    
        “Even the OECD authors of the PISA test acknowledge that PISA results are due to a combination of variables, including but not limited to schooling, life experiences/home environment, poverty, access to early childhood programs, and health. In 2013, the OECD wrote in one of their reports that poverty explains up to 46% of the PISA mathematics score in OECD countries. At no time did OECD claim, as Duncan stated, schools' performance on the test can be blamed on low expectations and complacency.”
    

[http://www.epi.org/publication/us-student-performance-
testin...](http://www.epi.org/publication/us-student-performance-testing/)

    
    
        “If U.S. adolescents had a social class distribution that was similar to the distribution in countries to which the United States is frequently compared, average reading scores in the United States would be higher than average reading scores in the similar post-industrial countries we examined (France, Germany, and the United Kingdom), and average math scores in the United States would be about the same as average math scores in similar post-industrial countries.”

------
darkmighty
They should take a hint from engineering:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nondestructive_testing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nondestructive_testing)

~~~
JorgeGT
I don't see how dousing the kids in vast amounts of gamma radiation will do
any good...

------
mamon
In Poland we have three levels of schools: 6 years elementary, 3 years middle
and 3 years high school. There are three standard tests done at the end of
each level, which are the basis for the admission to the next level school. I
don't see the point of making more standard tests than that - it's just an
unnecessary distraction.

And yes, with Polish system you also waste some time (usually last semester)
for teachers to do test-specific teaching, but that still seems better than
having 6-7 standard tests per year

~~~
zo1
You have this in English-based schools as well. 7 + 4 + 2 years. Primary,
lower and upper sections of the last 6 years of high-school, respectively.

Even though the tests are only towards the ends of the level, most of the time
prior to it is spent teaching for it as well. Except for primary, I think you
get to pass that no matter what, unless there is something seriously deficient
in your knowledge.

------
epalmer
In addition to the in-school teach to the test problem the focus on SAT and
ACT tests for college admissions is also a really big problem. For the kids
lucky enough to consider college, the fact remains that parents can throw
money at SAT test preparation and get test score improvements in the 100 point
range and more. I know because I have done this.

When I took the SAT in 1970 no one got assistance via test preparation. Now it
is, or so it seems mandatory to top the charts with test scores.

Colleges look to raise their selectiveness rating by admitting higher and
higher SAT (and ACT) test scores. The net affect is that for those that don't
know or can't afford test preparation classes, they have lower scores than
they might otherwise and the assumption is they have less choice in college
admission.

I work at a University that plays the selective SAT game but also is starting
to talk about if there are other ways of serving those that can succeed in
college but might not get the scores that we strive for in our admits.

I think after 9 years of working in higher education and being a parent of a
college grad and high school senior I think it is fair to say that both K12
public schools and institutions of higher education need some radical
reinvention. I just hope I live long enough to see it come to happen.

~~~
rch
Based on your experience working in higher education, would you say that the
SAT in its current form is as effective a test as the version you took in the
1970's?

My perception is that scores have become more correlated with money spent on
test preparation, and less correlated with actual aptitude.

~~~
epalmer
So I don't work directly with the admissions process (I run the public web)
but as a parent I see the correlation with money spent. Also I've had
conversations with the SAT preparation consultant that we used for both girls
and the degree to which preparation classes or one-on-one consultation helps
is dramatic at least at her firm. I know this to be true because of the
feedback from other parents that we recommended.

The funny thing is that one of the highest correlations with college
retention, as compared to just getting admitted, is how the student feels when
the visit the campus. If they feel like they will fit it they have a much
higher retention rate.

Because of this colleges track visits to their campus for campus tours and
some factor that in at least when courting the prospects.

------
mtreis86
I have never understood why we keep most kids grouped by age throughout their
education.

In my opinion, standardized testing is most useful in a situation where a very
limited number of tests are given as 'mile markers' in an educational path. A
re-calibration of the scale.

No two students learn at the same pace, why force it?

------
mschuster91
The fallacy with using tests of the kids as a marker for the quality of the
teachers is that you just can't do that and get reliable results.

A bunch of black kids from the ghettos, who have their parents in jail/dead,
worrying about siblings etc. and no cash to spend on basic school equipment,
much less a decent meal every day, will have vastly lower scores than a bunch
of white kids with helicopter parents.

If schools were adequately financed e.g. to provide free, healthy meals,
proper study rooms and free school supplies, that could at least reduce the
gap.

Unfortunately, kids can't vote and a large number of poor black kids end up in
jail or dead anyway so they can't vote even when they're old. And so, schools
remain the first place to go when politicians need to cut expenses.

~~~
336f5
> The fallacy with using tests of the kids as a marker for the quality of the
> teachers is that you just can't do that and get reliable results.

Which is not what is being proposed by people arguing for teacher evaluations
drawing on standardized testing ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value-
added_modeling](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value-added_modeling)), as the
very name 'value-added' implies.

~~~
acdha
VAM is a good idea but it's really hard to get right and the trend has been
make it very high stakes for teachers. You didn't really address the examples
which mschuster91 provided and that's important to understanding the problem:

1\. Limited parental support (note: this does not imply bad parents – working
3 jobs to pay the bills leaves little time to help with homework)

2\. Unstable living environment

3\. Strong financial restrictions

4\. Need to care for siblings[1]

5\. Food insecurity

How do you construct a VAM model which recognizes that a teacher who got a
class full of students suffering from one or more of those problems and
managed to improve them by one grade level had a LOT more work, and more
complicated work, than the teacher in a wealthy suburb who got a bunch of
students with affluent, involved parents who are both pushing their kids hard
to excel and providing tons of extra support outside of school?

This isn't just a philosophical debate, either, since school districts are
tying large parts of compensation to test scores. Starting with a hard job
which doesn't pay particularly well, how many years are you going to spend not
getting bonuses for your hard work or even being arbitrarily punished before
you give up and find an easier job?

One estimate has ~12% of NYC public school teachers being punished by the
flawed VAM in use there:

[http://mathbabe.org/2015/04/03/how-many-nyc-are-
arbitrarily-...](http://mathbabe.org/2015/04/03/how-many-nyc-are-arbitrarily-
punished-by-the-vam-about-578-per-year/)

That's a high number to begin with and downright shameful when you consider
that those schools are already facing a hard time getting qualified teachers.
If hiring is hard, you really need to make an effort to retain the people you
do manage to find.

1\. My wife has had students who felt pressure to skip after-school extra-
curricular activities or even go to an inferior college so they could care for
younger siblings while their parents worked. That's not wrong in the sense of
everyone involved having a sympathetic motive but it's a huge burden which
more affluent kids never even have to think about, which is why simple-
sounding ideas like making college admission or scholarships merit-based ends
up reinforcing the existing socioeconomic status quo rather than changing it.

~~~
336f5
> You didn't really address the examples which mschuster91 provided and that's
> important to understanding the problem:

On the contrary, I addressed it entirely. mschuster91 seems to be under the
impression that the teacher evaluation schemes boil down to nothing but the
simplest possible before-after comparison of grades of students, ignoring all
issues of demographics, differing student quality, differing school
circumstances, etc. Such a scheme is indeed absurd, as his counterexample
proves, but it is not what has been proposed by pretty much everyone! The
_actual_ proposals are well aware of what he thinks is the fatal problem, and
go to often elaborate lengths to model and adjust for these sorts of
heterogeneities in order to quantify the value- _added_ of a particular
teacher. The problem is recognized, included, and mostly dealt with. Whether
the solution works entirely or is worthwhile is unclear, but he's arguing
against a strawman.

> One estimate has ~12% of NYC public school teachers being punished by the
> flawed VAM in use there:

So I've looked at [http://mathbabe.org/2015/04/02/the-arbitrary-punishment-
of-n...](http://mathbabe.org/2015/04/02/the-arbitrary-punishment-of-new-york-
teacher-evaluations/) and I have zero idea what she is trying to show. She
assumes independence and treats it as a coin flip. Ummm.... what? With that
sort of logic, you could show no one could expect to score a 1600 on the SAT.
When criticized she links to a real analysis†, which shows considerable _non_
-independence which means her numbers are wrong and will overstate how many
will be denied tenure based on the VAMs. By the way, why are you phrasing it
as 'punished'? That sounds like you're assuming your conclusion. If VAM
doesn't affect hiring decisions, there's no point to bothering with it in the
first place is there, but if it does affect hiring decisions, that means
teachers are being 'punished'...?

† not that I think too much of it either, since it relies mostly on an
argument from incredulity and pointing angrily at some scatterplots, and tries
to ignore the r=.35 correlation of ratings from two subjects; to put an r=.35
in perspective, the correlation between years of education and intelligence is
only ~r=.55! Even the best IQ tests won't correlate with Gf more than r=.7 or
so. r=.35 is pretty good for a single pair. I don't know why he thinks a .24
is 'minuscule' when that means you're predicting half of variance... (I wonder
if this is a graphing problem? He doesn't seem to jitter the datapoints, which
for a large amount of discrete data will hide a lot of the density; a plot of
r=.35 of n=6k should look much more striking, like this:
[http://imgur.com/KcwmJJH](http://imgur.com/KcwmJJH) ) For implications, look
at the first graph and think about classification rates. Look at the
datapoints at 100 along one axis, then look across to see how many correspond
to <10 on the other; hardly any do, and the 100s are almost all mapped onto
80+ on the other axis. Or look at the 0s. In terms of identifying the bottom
decile, it's doing a good job.

------
littletimmy
The rich send their kids to private schools.

Therefore, this problem does not apply to the rich.

Therefore, this problem will not be solved.

~~~
forrestthewoods
This made me pause and think for a moment. What do rich kid schools do? I have
no idea. I went to a dumb kid rural high school. But for some reason through
the endless education discussion I've never heard brought up what rich kid
schools do differently. Even if the answer is "but we can't do that because
we're poor".

Man. Now you've got me all curious...

~~~
japhyr
One thing "rich kid schools" do is filter out many students who are difficult
to teach. Teaching and running a school is a lot easier if your goal does not
involve teaching everyone who walks through your doors.

~~~
logicchains
If that's the case, it seems like it would be a pretty easy problem to fix:
allow schools to suspend/expel students who are repeatedly disruptive or
violent in class. From a utilitarian perspective this would probably be a net
win, in that whatever the disruptive students lost from being expelled would
be more than made up for by what the students who actually wanted to learn
gained from not having the disruptive students interrupting the learning
process.

~~~
douche
It's not just the disruptive students - you've got the special-ed students,
and all the students that are what my mother (an elementary special-ed
teacher) refers to as "dull-normals" \- those who don't really have learning
disabilities that would get them labeled, but are just not very smart (80-100
IQ). Then there are the ESL students, and all the other categories I can't
think of at 3AM...

Public schools have to service all of these students, until they graduate,
drop out, or age out.

~~~
logicchains
Why don't private schools have to deal with these "dull-normals" too? Having
rich parents doesn't disqualify one from having below-average IQ.

~~~
timpattinson
Private schools can choose who they want to admit

~~~
logicchains
Well there must be private schools somewhere that admit children of below-
average intelligence, due to the profit to be had from rich parents with said
children, so perhaps it would be instructive to look at how those schools
handle it.

~~~
jwdunne
In the UK, I've seen richer parents simply send their children who didn't not
meet private school's admissions and performance requirements to state school
(the one I attended!) whilst their siblings passed the requirements and
remained at the private school.

I remember two kids from primary school seemed to have disappeared and then
reappeared a few months down the line from school year start. They didn't make
the cut like their siblings. I think one of those kids, thinking back, was the
son of the managing director of the company that is now TalkTalk pre-
acquisition.

~~~
logicchains
That's somewhat disheartening: it suggests that it isn't a problem that can be
solved by throwing more money at it.

~~~
jwdunne
It's not. Private schools I've heard of and experienced have strong academic
selection criteria on top of being incredibly expensive.

My son had funding for a time for nursery and was moved into the prep school.
It was like seeing a foreign school. Class sizes were naturally smaller and I
noted things such as their morning 'prayer', which went along the lines of "I
vow to work hard today in everything I do", where as my morning prayer in an
RC school was the Our Father.

I also saw kids in my sons class who, at 3 years old, were able to compute
divisions in their head and articulate in a way that I've never seen a child
that age speak.

These places are optimised for kids who have a lot of money backing them up
and the brain power to boot. In some respects, their parents ability to simply
hire help to ensure their kids do well academically must be noted too.

------
xname2
One test per major course per school year, how the hell could this be
"overwhelming"?

------
wnevets
That was the point of the of no child left behind. If a select few aren't
getting rich off of a public service then it must be broken and privatized.

