Helping Some Students May Harm High Achievers | Hacker News Reader

Helping Some Students May Harm High Achievers

nytimes.com

10 pointsnaish16 comments

* * face-palm * *

Do these people actually understand any maths at all?

In tests of fourth-grade reading from 2000 to 2007, for instance, the scores of the lowest-achieving students increased by 16 points on a 280-point scale, compared with a gain of three points for top-achieving students, according to the study

Riiight...and the point behind this policy is to get EXACTLY THIS RESULT. Assuming ideal tests (har, har), the goal is that top students should continue to move up, but the bottom end start to close the gap.

I mean, there may be other, objective reasons to suspect that the top achievers are being short-changed - and the American HS system is sufficiently screwed up that I'd readily believe it. But if you adopt a policy of narrowing the gap is adopted (but letting the top students continue to improve), and then you get figures showing that the gap is indeed narrowing (but the top students continue to improve)... what the hell are you doing pointing and yelling "failure"?

On the evidence they supply, they're talking bullshit. On a pogo stick.

"...since the law made it a goal to reduce the gap separating low-scoring, poor and minority students from higher-scoring white students."

I'm pretty sure that the article is just misleading here. IIRC, the NCLB mandates that the average test scores of the school improve each year or else the school loses funding. The schools then turn around and only teach the lowest scoring students since they show the biggest returns in points per dollar spent. When the NYT says that the goal of the NCLB is to reduce the gap, I think they mean it's one of the ideological goals rather than an actual funding trigger. And the argument is that while it would be nice to reduce the gap between high- and low-scoring students, only teaching the bottom quartile because it's the easiest way to game the system is the wrong way to go about it.

I haven't actually read the text of the final law, but that's at least what educational theorists were saying was going to happen based on the draft text before the bill was enacted.

Plus, the higher your test score, the harder it is to eek out the last few points. Especially once you hit 100%

This article fails to mention what the increases were in a similar time period before the law. Also, wouldn't you expect the highest achievers not to increase much since they are already at the top?

It would be very difficult to measure the improvement in test scores before the tests were created.

"In tests of fourth-grade reading from 2000 to 2007, for instance, the scores of the lowest-achieving students increased by 16 points on a 280-point scale, compared with a gain of three points for top-achieving students, according to the study, by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a research organization in Washington."

Is it just me or does this seem normal? Is it not much harder for someone on top to improve vs. someone on the bottom? For example, a Michael Jordan who already spends considerable effort and energy being the best (having little more total time to work on improving), vs. someone who puts little time and effort (having much more time to contribute and therefore improve).

Readers of this post might enjoy this: http://www.openeducation.net/2008/03/10/several-lessons-to-b...

Nice article. I liked this quote: While “the U.S. holds teachers accountable for teaching” in Finland “they hold the students accountable for learning.”

Just one of the many examples of how government policy goes in the opposite direction of science and empirical results.

Agreed. I generally sum this idea up as victim-based policies vs. enabling policies. This is subtle in the language people use too. Some people say, "we need to control this" implying they want to rule out everything and allow some things. I prefer "we need to influence this" because, to me, this says we want to allow everything and disallow some things. It fosters a more open and creative environment where people are free to try new things, since new things are allowed.

I find it remarkable that they somehow claim that it's doing a disservice to the high achievers that they didn't increase as much in their results. It's not as if they were disadvantaged, EVERYONE improved, so it's hard to see how this will spell doom for the competitiveness of the nation. This wouldn't be an example of the (white male) high achievers feeling threatened, would it?

That is, if you think that the NCLB indicators measure something tangible and important...

> I find it remarkable that they somehow claim that it's doing a disservice to the high achievers that they didn't increase as much in their results.

Yes, it is a disservice to high achievers and to society as a whole. Bringing the more intelligent ones down is fine, as long as you don't need anybody to cure cancer or invent the Internet.

> This wouldn't be an example of the (white male) high achievers feeling threatened, would it?

By attacking white males you're making HN a worse place for me, a white male. Stop with it.

Sorry, but you didn't read the article or my response correctly. They did not bring the high achievers down. They just brought them up less than the ones further down. But if they could cure cancer or invent the internet before, they should still be able to do so, and better, now.

I'm a white male too, btw. (We can take a little attack. ;-) I'm just saying that high-achievers complaining that the educational policies didn't further widen the gap seems so dishonest that there must be something more than societal well-being behind that sentiment. It's not as if the US has a problem at the high end, it's the 25% high-school dropout rate that brings it down compared to other countries in the educational measures.

Most people add little value to the society. Please see Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.

In my opinion, what is education, and the whole welfare state, about is creating the best environment for the high archievers, and not limiting them needlessly. The thing is that no one knows which family raises a genius. That is why all children, and thus their parents, should have the slighty the same starting environment, or at least the guaranteed minimum.

One side note is that most educational reforms perceive the education as a thing separated from the society. It is not truth. For instance, it is harder to be a high archiever if your parents lack the social and cultural capital. And the financial capital's role is way less important than before.

The yet another side note is that enormous time, at least in Polish education, is wasted on propaganda and socialization. This time could be spent better.

After seventh grade my parents brought me to the best math school in Russia, the Moscow 57th. I passed the entry tests (barely), and studied there for four years. University - math, honors degree - was a breeze after that. I shudder to think of what my life would've been like if that didn't happen... or if the 57th was financially forced to bring underachievers up, instead of kicking them out. Before it, I was absolutely not adjusted to society, and was often bullied at regular schools. That's why I'm in favor of widening the gap, giving maximum opportunities to gifted kids.

If the high-achievers are bored because they're so much ahead of the rest of the group (probably in part because they're more independent in learning material themselves), why not fund an inexpensive program to guide them towards more advanced topics which they can learn after they're finished with the standard topics and at their leasure?

Obligatory 'Examination Day' (1300-word short story) reference:

[PDF] http://education.uncc.edu/ssagallag/6124/Examination%20Day.p...

[HTML] http://englischlehrer.de/texts/examination_day.php

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