

Firestorm Erupts Over Virginia's Education Goals - Shivetya
http://www.nwpr.org/post/firestorm-erupts-over-virginias-education-goals

======
tokenadult
[After edit: the submission title has been changed to match the original
article title, in accord with the Hacker News guidelines. This is an
interesting article on an important issue.]

On the underlying policy issue, of course it is a good idea to set high
standards for all pupils in a public school system and to manage the system so
that as many pupils as possible can meet those standards. One example of good
practice in the charter school sector, serving mostly low-income minority
students, is the work of the Uncommon Schools charter school network,

<http://www.uncommonschools.org/>

where Doug Lemov's Teach Like a Champion principles have been carefully
monitored for their effectiveness in boosting student learning.

<http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/07/magazine/07Teachers-t.html>

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

Economist Roland Fryer is convinced that improvements in classroom practice
can do much to improve educational outcomes for the most disadvantaged
learners in the United States.

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

AFTER EDIT: A story from National Public Radio, "Struggle For Smarts? How
Eastern And Western Cultures Tackle Learning"

submitted to Hacker News by another participant yesterday

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4773019>

(alas without comments after not appearing on the front page in time) is a
very good supplement on the idea of different teaching practices producing
different learning outcomes. That article is based on a comparison of
classroom teaching practices between the United States and east Asia. I have
lived in one of the countries profiled in that story, and can confirm the
general correctness of the facts reported in the story.

I look forward to thoughtful discussion about the policy issues being brought
up in this thread.

------
rayiner
I think there is value in taking into account the starting point of various
schools in setting goals, but I can't believe they would be dumb enough to use
a suspect classification (race) as the metric instead of something like
socioeconomic status or the original passing rates for individual schools.

~~~
aqme28
Why can't we measure a student's progress longitudinally? It can't be a cost
problem.

A student's improvement should be measured based on that student's previous
level, not the level of that student's race.

edit: Basically, wouldn't it be both smart and possible to keep track of a
student's education records just like we do with a person's medical records?

~~~
twoodfin
We can. This was, if I'm not mistaken, the fundamental idea behind NCLB.
Schools had been hiding behind average test scores that obscured the fact that
some kids were excelling while others were being shuffled along. So you test
every student and grade schools on the absolute fraction that are hitting
desired progress toward grade-level competency, not on averages or relative
rates for different subgroups.

But schools and teachers hated the added testing, and hated being labeled as
"failing" when they failed to get a substantial fraction of their students up
to grade level. Parents hated their schools being labeled "failing" (and
feared the corresponding property value hit) while _their_ children were doing
just fine.

So now we have waivers from NCLB and we're unsurprisingly back to the "soft
bigotry of low expectations".

Sorry to sound cynical about this. Really, I wish the Federal government would
get out of the local education business entirely, besides making sure civil
rights aren't being violated. But if they're going to be involved, they should
be pushing for exactly the kind of student-by-student accountability that NCLB
(no doubt with many imperfections) tried to impose.

~~~
rayiner
> Sorry to sound cynical about this. Really, I wish the Federal government
> would get out of the local education business entirely, besides making sure
> civil rights aren't being violated. But if they're going to be involved,
> they should be pushing for exactly the kind of student-by-student
> accountability that NCLB (no doubt with many imperfections) tried to impose.

The reason the federal government is involved in local education is that
states do a terrible job of delivering uniformity in educational quality.
White flight in the 1960's left urban school districts like Chicago as 85%+
low income and 90%+ black/hispanic. These school districts just don't have the
property taxing power that homogenous suburban school districts have, and the
federal government comes in to make up the difference.

~~~
twoodfin
Sure, and it behooves the Federal government to be certain those tax dollars
are furthering their goals.

It is fascinating to browse around the "report cards" issued under NCLB for
schools in, e.g., Illinois:

<http://schools.chicagotribune.com/>

------
firefoxman1
I attended Virginia schools from grades 4-12, and my particular school
district decided it would be a good idea to have a "prestigious" grading scale
(A=93-100, B=87-92, C=78-86, and so on). It seemed like a good idea at first:
A public school system would be known for having "higher standards" than
others. The problem? Colleges didn't give a damn what grading scale you used.
Your GPA was the same as anyone's, which made it harder on every student
without any real benefit.

My question is what does this "achievement standard" do if the grading system
stays the same? It doesn't really seem to affect anyone, except maybe takes
another step toward eliminating "survival of the fittest"

~~~
sachingulaya
My college had the same idea. To 'boost' the program they made the average GPA
2.8.

The result? About 60%(instead of the usual 50%) of the graduating class was
automatically denied interviews at company's that had a 3.0 minimum GPA
requirement.

~~~
abduhl
Since when is a B the 50th percentile?

~~~
sachingulaya
It doesn't matter what a B 'is'. Students and hiring managers both know B's
are worthless.

------
herbig
The HN title, "Grading kids by race" is misleading. It's not grading kids by
race, it's setting different passing rate goals for different minority groups.

"Virginia's expectation is that all students, regardless of race or ethnicity,
will correctly answer the same number of questions to pass the state tests."

------
mc32
I think this should be judged on its merits (results and intent). In the end,
is this system better able to track progress and lift academic competency for
affected children? Arguably race isn't and should not be the best or even the
preferred selection criterion. Maybe economics, entrance exam results, etc.,
should guide the classification and tracking, regardless of race.

------
patrickgzill
President Bush may or may not have been an idiot, but his speechwriter coined
a useful phrase, "the soft bigotry of low expectations".

------
mikegioia
While I think this is interesting in that the state is trying something new (I
didn't even know states could get waivers for no child left behind) I can't
help but think this will have a negative impact on the kids.

They're basically being told that because of their race they have a lower
expectation. Regardless of what historic data says, is lowering expectations
for certain minorities ever the right approach? This just sounds like treating
a symptom.

~~~
tedivm
Think about it in the other direction too- if you're an asian who isn't the
best at math you're considered a failure for not getting consistant B+ and A
grades.

------
arkclark
If I understand this correctly, they're not saying asian students have to
score almost twice as highly than black students. Instead, they're saying,
"Okay, a majority of asians are passing our standards and proportionally fewer
of black students are, so let's set those as a baseline and seek to improve
from there."

I find it questionable they would set the bar for what portion of students
should pass state standards based on race, but if black students statistically
struggle compared to asian students, I can see why they would do this.

------
woodchuck64
Policies like this are a result of ignoring good science in social cognition
on the reality of stereotype threats. See for example
<http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2570773/>

~~~
anigbrowl
Being informed that you're attending a 'failing school' strikes me as just as
much of a stereotype threat.

------
gte910h
Florida is doing something similarly horrible.

~~~
pc86
I think it would be more horrible to expect everyone to get 85 regardless of
whether they're starting at 82 or 52.

~~~
ori_b
I think it would be a good idea to expect everyone to learn the material and
be evaluated on their ability. If someone does a better job, they should get a
better grade.

If people find it hard to do understand the material, the solution isn't to
let them scrape by with less understanding. That's doing the students a
disservice. Instead, we should be investigating why the students are doing
poorly, and at least attempting to fix the root causes. Bring people up to the
desired standards, don't drop the standards.

I think it's horrible to think that just because someone started off behind,
they're too incompetent to produce the same quality of work as another student
that started off with an advantage.

~~~
illuminate
"I think it's horrible to think that just because someone started off behind,
they're too incompetent to produce the same quality of work as another student
that started off with an advantage."

People who start off behind tend to not spontaneously catch up. And yes, it is
horrible. "incompetent" is a bit of a loaded term to describe their current
levels of understanding, however.

