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

[Bernard Cleyet <bernardcleyet@redshift.com>]

I think the problem is,  verbal communication is very culturally dependent.  when one says F = mA    it's likely understood exactly.  When one writes poverty causes low achievement, it's understood it's a significant** cause of low achievement;  i.e. one of many and may be mitigated.



**  Very culturally defined, n'est-ce pas?

bc, not convinced by M's scholasticism.


p.s.   I post again the link to an article below, which uses a very sophisticated stat. analysis of very many TX students; the article referred by Toni Feeder in "Physics Today"  [IV 2010, IIRC]


"We show that student outcomes depend strongly upon economic class, and identify the grade levels where flows of different groups diverge most strongly. Changing the effectiveness of instruction in one grade naturally leads to strongly nonlinear effects on student outcomes in subsequent grades."


http://www.pnas.org/content/106/41/17267.full.pdf+html


On 2010, Sep 04, , at 16:20, M. Horton wrote:

>  If there is one exception to that, then poverty is not the (sole) cause of the difference.  I agree that there is a strong correlation between poverty and low performance in most cases, but the existence of outliers proves that it is not a causal relationship.  AVID produces a DVD of success stories of their students.  There is one story told by a homeless boy who goes back to school and ends up at Georgetown University.  Can't get much poorer than homeless.  Did this student's economics change?  No, his support at school changed.