Re: [Phys-l] Friendship trumps competance Was: Re:WHY VALUEADDEDTESTING IS A BUST.

["John Clement" <clement@hal-pc.org>]

> Here's the link to the 99%:
> http://www.greatschools.org/cgi-bin/tx/other/3378#students
As far as I can see there is no information about free & reduced price
lunches on this website about Crawford.  So the 74% still stands for the
free/reduced lunches.  I asked about the 99% free/reduced lunches, but
obviously did not make it clear.  Here is a website with the lunch
statistic:
http://www.publicschoolreview.com/school_ov/school_id/78876

There is no doubt the Crawford looks like it is much better than many other
schools with similar demographics, but the difference between it and a high
performing affluent school is still quite high.  So the effect of poverty
was not completely overcome.  Here I am comparing two schools that have done
things to raise test scores.  If you are making an argument based on one
outlier, then it should be compared with another outlier.  And of course the
ratings of schools focus only on the test scores, and not on other factors.
This of course makes the high SES schools look good and then they attract
more high SES students.  The poor folks can't afford houses near the
"outstanding" schools.

There is one interesting statistic about Crawford that needs some
explanation.  The distribution of students by grade is heavily weighted to
the younger grades and there seems to be a steady outflow of students
because the later grades have far fewer students.  So what is going on?  I
have seen this statistic for several years and it seems to be steady.

There are several hypotheses that one might make.  Is the purely demographic
in the sense that you have a bulge in children sort of like a baby boom?
But the fact that it is steady would seem to deny this.  Or could it be a
sign of a problem?  Are children dropping out of Crawford which could then
inflate the test scores?  Is the population upwardly mobile and moving to
better schools?  Both of these would change the statistics.  What is the
retention rate in Crawford?  High retention leads to dropouts.  An area with
upward mobility should have parents who are dedicated to helping their
children do better in schools, but an area in despair will not.  You can
live in poverty or you can have poverty live within you.

There has been plenty of evidence that schools have managed to inflate their
test scores by a variety of strategies such as holding back students who
might score low.  The population decrease at Crawford might be a sign of
exactly this sort of strategy.

Ravitch may not be completely on base, as there are many things that can be
done to improve education for low performing students.  But there is no
doubt that poverty is one very important axis in the equation, and the
effects of it are known to the education researchers.  The evidence from
Crawford is that they probably have done things that improve the education,
but there may be a drop out side effect?

There are many possible things that can be done to improve education, and
there are even more things that look like they improve education, but in
reality do the opposite.

Unfortunately the people who have a fixed idea claim that it will entirely
do the job.  When you look at research based education, there are a number
of things that are done in tandem, and not just one thing is changed.  So
how do you fight the effects of poverty?  One way is to have strategies to
combat the poverty, and there are studies that show this has a positive
effect on education.  Doing away with the long summer break and having more
breaks of shorter duration may be helpful because the paper I referenced
pointed out that high SES students actually gain in reading during the
summer while low ones go down.  But this is not THE solution, but just one
that will buy something.  Or better yet, pay students in impoverished areas
to stay in school during the summer and have an enrichment program.  The
reason for paying students is that impoverished families often need their
children to help them earn money.  But of course this means $$$ and the high
SES schools usually have more resources, while the low SES schools have
less.

Anyone who follows this list knows that I advocate different methods of
teaching and of testing, which have been shown to improve thinking, and
science knowledge.  This would also be beneficial for low performing schools
as Shayer & Adey have shown.  But again, this is not the only change that
needs to be made.  Also have a good program for diagnosing problems, and
remediating them.  There is now a treatment for low working memory, and it
can be expanded, so why not use it?  Feuerstein has a method for diagnosing
cognitive deficits and for treating them.  Why isn't that being done?  All
of these things require resources beyond the norm, except for Shayer&Adey's
program.  All of these require training beyond the usual for teachers, so
why isn't that being done?  Incidentally Shayer&Adey showed that schools
using their program moved from below average, to significantly above.
Unfortunately it is designed for middle school ages 10+, and they have not
designed an equivalent for elementary.

One of the previously cited articles was about the Chicago schools as being
the model for the current Ed department, and that may actually be a problem.

So I can admit that the cited schools are doing something right, but I will
not retract the idea that the high stakes testing is overall having negative
effects on education.

Now if you read the article "It's the poverty stupid" carefully, it
certainly does focus on poverty, but Ravitch blasted the billionaires club
for focusing on testing as a way of getting improved teachers.  The article
which I reposted from BC showed that the statistics for using the high
stakes testing agree with this assertion.  Her negativity about charter
schools is correct, because on the average they do no better, and indeed
private schools on the average do no better according to a metastudy which
factored out the known effect of SES.  Most advocates of charter schools
focus on the high performing ones, but fail to compare them with the high
performing regular public schools.  The real gist of the article is that the
current climate of blaming the teachers and unions is taking attention away
from poverty.  And I see this as a correct assertion.  Again the pols and
public have latched onto somebody to blame rather than looking at the
overall problem.  Unions are not impeding TX, because here the unions are
ineffective and weak, yet TX has very low overall success with a huge drop
out rate.  The teachers in most schools are actually doing the same things.
Notice the article I previous referenced pointed out that the same teachers
perform better in better schools.  The effect of this is to drive out the
best teachers, and we will end up with only the average ones.

Here is the link to the paper again:
http://epi.3cdn.net/724cd9a1eb91c40ff0_hwm6iij90.pdf

John M. Clement
Houston, TX