tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post8539506018507247381..comments2024-03-29T05:14:33.223-07:00Comments on Steve Sailer: iSteve: What have we learned?Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger49125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-47276628129614802242010-03-29T11:31:06.807-07:002010-03-29T11:31:06.807-07:00What have we learned?
That some truths are so ug...<i>What have we learned?</i> <br /><br />That some truths are so ugly they will never make it through Komment Kontrol.<br /><br />Now back to your regularly scheduled programming.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-5324328725297240172010-03-28T18:11:42.013-07:002010-03-28T18:11:42.013-07:00I swung by the Barnes and Nobles looking for a goo...I swung by the Barnes and Nobles looking for a good review book that would help answer some of Steve's questions (what works, doesn't for educational methods).<br /><br />There seems to be a belief in this group that smart people learn by puzzles and dumb by rote. There may be something to this, but I'm not sure it is so simple. I have seen below average people learn from puzzles in service classes. And remember better because of it. Then, I have also experienced hard core quantum classes that (I felt) were poor methodolgically because of an inadequate amount of easier homework problems (to help grasp the material, build familiarity with strangeness), instead the only problems given tended to be totall ballbusters. I think some general studies on the advantages, disadvantages of rote versus puzzle would be helpful. Actually even for rote, there are ways to make it fun (cards, games, etc.) that tend to add effectiveness versus inefficent learning like just staring at the paper, or higjhliting the book, or writing and rewriting.TCOnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-87413005615016613562010-03-28T13:23:14.948-07:002010-03-28T13:23:14.948-07:00"That's a losing proposition for your sch..."That's a losing proposition for your school budget if you spend double or triple the money and end up with the same performance."<br /><br /><br />Steve, <br /><br />LA public schools spend $25,000 per student per year. They can afford your tutoring model even if the pay the tutors $100,000 a year.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-63917979616174330012010-03-28T13:16:56.384-07:002010-03-28T13:16:56.384-07:00#4: If you can't learn to read, write, add, su...#4: If you can't learn to read, write, add, subtract, multiply, and divide by the sixth grade, you won't have learned to by the eight grade, nor by the twelth grade either.<br /><br />-------- Agreed to the extent that early proficiency will predict future proficiency. But as a blanket statement this also is dubious."<br /><br /><br />Maybe for the basic level but as you go up through high school, there are plenty of kids who can get an A in algebra in 12th grade (and really understand it) but could not pass it in 8th grade. <br /><br />A slower pace of instruction is appropriate for many reasonably able students in the 95-110 IQ range. Generally the only kids getting A's in Algebra in 7th or 8th grade have IQ's of at least 125.<br /><br />The problem is that schooling is politicized and educrats want the impossible: diverse students performing similarly.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-31640517414250825472010-03-28T13:07:16.017-07:002010-03-28T13:07:16.017-07:00"So quibbles aside, there's nothing inher..."So quibbles aside, there's nothing inherently wrong with what's being taught in even the notorious LA schools-- a lot of it is exactly the same as what Texas kids are being taught. It's the quality of the students that's far more important to outcomes here."<br /><br /><br />Great point. <br /><br />Similar education.<br /><br />LAUSD $25,000 per student annually<br /><br />Houston ISD $12,000 per student annually<br /><br />LA could cut the cost and get similar results.<br /><br />California Lefties are just overcharging the citizens.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-794823060941547392010-03-28T11:44:53.113-07:002010-03-28T11:44:53.113-07:00"Asians may have higher GPAs and SAT scores b...<i>"Asians may have higher GPAs and SAT scores because they study more than whites. The SAT is not nearly as g-loaded as it used to be."<br /><br />Asians > Whites = Work ethic.<br />Whites > Blacks = Intelligence<br /><br />Got it.</i><br />You are right, it's obviously:<br /><br />Asians > Whites = work ethic + intelligence<br />Whites > Blacks = work ethic + intelligenceJeremiahJohnbalayanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-24329153154828904532010-03-28T10:35:06.141-07:002010-03-28T10:35:06.141-07:00Tryin' to think of a catcher who moved to shor...<i>Tryin' to think of a catcher who moved to shortstop..... hmmm....</i><br /><br />Ray Boone.<br /><br />"Back in 1948, Manager Pat Ankenman of the Oklahoma City Indians made one of baseball's most unusual and little-remembered decisions. Sometime in June, he switched Ray Ike Boone from catcher to shortstop...."ben tillmannoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-86599199587042835922010-03-28T00:45:16.539-07:002010-03-28T00:45:16.539-07:00"---------- Exactly what would those pressure..."---------- Exactly what would those pressures be?" <br /><br />The expectation that all groups be proportionately represented at the high, mid, and lower ranges of academic performance. In short, the pressure to equalize the performance of all groups.<br /><br />The expectation that greater and greater percentages of the overall population must undergo university education, and that increasing these percentages is necessarily a sensible allocation of resources.<br /><br />Th expectation that all students achieve a level of "competency," with the underlying assumption that "competency" means something other than the ability to breathe.<br /><br />"How does political pressure for example, prevent a white kid from pulling his grades up in Algebra, so he can perform say at the level of an Asian kid in the same class?"<br /><br />This isn't relevant to anything in my comment. In other words, I never claimed nor implied that such pressures prevent white students from studying harder and improving their grades, though in fact the mediocre and duplicitous educational environment that such pressures create may in fact retard such development, though it does the Asian students no favors as well.Black Seahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16347464061061628147noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-80940551335634000182010-03-27T19:21:51.413-07:002010-03-27T19:21:51.413-07:00"Asians may have higher GPAs and SAT scores b..."Asians may have higher GPAs and SAT scores because they study more than whites. The SAT is not nearly as g-loaded as it used to be."<br /><br />Asians > Whites = Work ethic.<br />Whites > Blacks = Intelligence<br /><br />Got it.Truthhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17286755693955361308noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-56164548017393205002010-03-27T18:57:18.699-07:002010-03-27T18:57:18.699-07:00Really, the nightmare stories of how terrible the ...Really, the nightmare stories of how terrible the California public school curriculum is are highly exaggerated. <br /><br />I have three kids in elementary schools in the infamous LAUSD, and the reading program used is Open Court Reading, the same phonics-based system that's used in Texas. The teachers hate it because it doesn't leave a lot of room for teacher creativity, but it seems to work fine for the students and my kids all taught themselves to read before they started kindergarten so it's not really an issue for us. Similarly, the math instruction on the elementary level is largely drill-based and unobjectionable, and the history classes are surprisingly similar (building California missions!) to the Western Civ-based classes that California boomers and xers remember.<br /><br />At the end of the day, it comes down to student quality. Our public school in a corner of the San Fernando Valley is mostly middle class white (a lot of below the line film and tv workers) with a ton of Persians and Armenians and a smattering of bright black and Hispanic kids whose parents were motivated enough to get them bused in or to move into apartments in the area to access the good local schools. Result? API scores in the perfectly respectable 850-950 range.<br /><br />So quibbles aside, there's nothing inherently wrong with what's being taught in even the notorious LA schools-- a lot of it is exactly the same as what Texas kids are being taught. It's the quality of the students that's far more important to outcomes here.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-18449902542886976462010-03-27T16:44:57.019-07:002010-03-27T16:44:57.019-07:00Too Tall Jones said...
"Persistently large ra...Too Tall Jones said...<br /><i>"Persistently large racial gaps are the single most obvious fact about educational performance."<br /><br />The "race gap" above is only ONE such fact about educational performance. There are a few others namely that whites are routinely outperformed by Asians...</i><br /><br />Too tall "Jones", you coulda skipped writing three posts if you realized Asians were race. You really didn't know? Really?<br /><br />Asians may be underrepresented in mental health clinical trials because of risk-aversion and stigmatization of mental illness by Asians. Clinical trial participation is of course different than mental illness rate. Cuz by white standards, a huge chunk have anxiety disorders at the minimum. <br /><br />Asians may have higher GPAs and SAT scores because they study more than whites. The SAT is not nearly as g-loaded as it used to be. As for college admissions, if you accept diversity as a factor in college admissions, of course higher scoring populations should be held to a higher standard. If not, well whites created the Cali universities. I'm sure Asians are very well-represented at colleges in Asia.robnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-25789107763329289862010-03-27T14:23:45.121-07:002010-03-27T14:23:45.121-07:00BlackSea sez:
#1: Students who work hard at a sub...BlackSea sez:<br /><br />#1: Students who work hard at a subject generally do so because they like the subject, and they generally like the subject because they are good at the subject. It is therefore difficult (and often fruitless) to urge weak students to work hard at a subject they know they are not good at.<br /><br />------ Dubious. There are plenty of students who do well in subjects they DON'T like, thru a combination of parental pressure, classrrom pressure and good instruction. Weak students can pull their performances up. Just ask "loser" Thomas Sowell.<br /><br /><br />#2: It is impossible to generate an interest among students in a subject they are not equipped to understand.<br /><br />-------- Not necessarily. You could have students very interested in Science even though they may do poorly at it.<br /><br /><br />#3: The level of instruction in a given course shouldn't necessarily be aimed at the very brightest students in the class, but gearing instruction and assignments toward the abilities of those at the threshold between the top and second quartiles of the class is probably about right.<br /><br />----------- Perhaps.<br /><br /><br />#4: If you can't learn to read, write, add, subtract, multiply, and divide by the sixth grade, you won't have learned to by the eight grade, nor by the twelth grade either.<br /><br />-------- Agreed to the extent that early proficiency will predict future proficiency. But as a blanket statement this also is dubious.<br /><br /><br />#6: The shortcomings and wasteful expenditures of our educational system result not from lack of understanding about how students learn, but rather from political and social pressures which we dare not refuse.<br /><br />---------- Exactly what would those pressures be? How does political pressure for example, prevent a white kid from pulling his grades up in Algebra, so he can perform say at the level of an Asian kid in the same class?Too Tall Jonesnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-33226900443380484942010-03-27T14:12:41.708-07:002010-03-27T14:12:41.708-07:00continued:
"Persistently large racial gaps ar...continued:<br /><b>"Persistently large racial gaps are the single most obvious fact about educational performance."</b><br /><br />Asian students are a remarkable 2.5 times more likely than their white classmates to qualify for admission for the prestigious the University of california system, They make up 10 percent of the state's population, but almost half of the student body at the state's two flagship schools, Berkeley and UCLA. Of the top bracket in the basic SAT I, Asians made up 25% in Math and 11% in verbal, even though only 4.2% of the eligible students. In the more specialized SAT II tests, Asian scores were again spectacular, thripe their shareof top scores in writing and historym five times their proportional share in biology and about 8 times theit share in boh SAT II math tests, in chemistry and in physics.(Thernstrom S. (2004) No Excuses: CLosing the Racial Gap in Learning. p- 88-110).The same pattern shows in higher income Asians. Asian parents who had earned graduate degrees outperformed white students from comparable homes by 42% on SAT scores. <br /><br />In verbal scores, whites from higher income levels do better, although this is reversed at income levels 60,000 or above where Asians seize advantage. Thernstrom 2004 and other researchers attribute this to the fact that many Asian students grow up in homes in which English is not the main language, and suggests that Asians would outperform white even on verbal tests if English ws the first language of Asian test takers.He shows that over a thirdof second generation Asians ranked in the top quartile nationally on national NELS tests.<br /><br />In highly selective institutions of higher education the Asian presence is striking. Only 4% of the US population is Asian, yer Asians made up 27% of the 2000-2001 freshman class at MIT, 25% at Stanford, 24% at Cal tech, 18% at Columbiam 17% at Harvard and 12% at Duke or Princeton. Asians are far more likely to graduate from college. In 2000, a majority (54%) of Asians ages 25-29 had a bachelor's degree or more compared to just 34% of whites. [quote] "The 20-point Asian-white graduation rate gap is even larger than the 16-point black-white gap." (Thernstrom p. 85).<br /><br /><br /><br />It could thus be said that so called "wasted" efforts to boost the performance of black students, are in fact productive for white students, who ALSO benefit from greater attention to the basics, more direct instruction, more rigor and better attention to testing, etc. In other words, the real agenda behind the debate on black-white gaps may only serve to mask a deeper reality- that of intense white efforts to reverse white decline -- the real agenda is to reduce the Asian-White gap. Educational improvement efforts supposedly "directed at blacks" may in actuality be really targeted at white students. Blacks are put out front as convenient stalking horses however - to take the heat.Too Tall Jonesnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-75407747221131156882010-03-27T14:08:13.289-07:002010-03-27T14:08:13.289-07:00"Persistently large racial gaps are the singl...<b>"Persistently large racial gaps are the single most obvious fact about educational performance."</b><br /><br />The "race gap" above is only ONE such fact about educational performance. There are a few others namely that whites are routinely outperformed by Asians, who also post higher graduation rates and better grades, and more admission to prestige schools proportionally than whites, etc. THAT gap doesn't receive as much publicity but it is also an "elephant" there. In fact one recent WSJ article shows WHITE parents avoiding or running away from enrollment in certain schools to avoid tougher Asian competition. The Journal calls the phenomenon "The New White Flight."<br />http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB113236377590902105-lMyQjAxMDE1MzEyOTMxNjkzWj.html<br /><br /> <br />Lets look at those OTHER facts. Asians have three to five times their proportionate share of college faculty, architects, scientists, teachers, engineers, and physicians. They are overrepresented among winners of National Merit Scholarships, U.S. Presidential Scholarships, Arts Recognition and Talent Search scholars, and Westinghouse Science Talent Search scholars. They are overrepresented at American's most prestigious universities (Flynn 1991), constituting roughly 50% of the freshmen at the University of California at Berkeley and 10% to 30% of students in many other elite universities (Arenson 2007). They score higher on the SAT and ACT, especially in math. In published "school report cards" mandated by the No Child Left Behind Act, they perform much better than other minority groups. They generally excel in quantitative skills and outnumber whites in engineering and computer science disciplines (Hune and Chan 1997). Conservative scholars such as Richard Lynn show Asians achieving higher test scores than whites and estimate the IQs of Asians in their native countries to be higher than that of whites (Lynn 1991). The Asian superiority was especially pronounced in math (Stevenson and Lee 1990). The Asian advantage seems to prevail even in adoption situations. An adoption study of Korean children adopted by whites in Belgium (average ave 1.15), compared the tests of the Asian children with those of native whites, using the French version of the well known WISC test. The Asian children obtained a mean IQ of 119- some 19 points ahead of native whites. This was later norm-corrected to about 110 points, still ahead of native whites. (Sternberg 2000).<br /><br />Asian American students have also been found to spend significantly more time on homework (Steinberg 1996) and parents have higher educational expectations for their children than White Americans did (Mau, 1997). Golden (2006) revealed that colleges held Asian-American students to a higher standard than whites. Golden concluded that some Asian-American students who would have been admitted if they were of any other ethnicity got rejected -- often for reasons based on stereotype -- to make room for "more desirable" students. Consequently, Asian-American students face by far the lowest admissions rate of any ethnic group (17.6%, compared with 23.8% for whites, 33.7% for blacks, and 26.8% for Hispanics) (Shea 2006), despite the fact that they constitute great numbers of students in some prestigious universities. Asians also seem to have less mental health problems than whites. A 2007 analysis of 379 National Institute of Mental Health-funded psychiatric clinical trial studies published between 1995 and 2004 found that Asian Americans made up only 0.6% of the patients studied -- the lowest representation of any ethnic group (Morain 2007).Too Tall Jonesnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-66047731921773486682010-03-27T13:42:22.468-07:002010-03-27T13:42:22.468-07:00Thrasymachus:
Little of what goes on in public sc...Thrasymachus:<br /><br /><i>Little of what goes on in public schools can be called education.</i><br /><br />Finally, someone hit the nail on the head.<br /><br /><i>I went to "good", well-financed, suburban public schools with mostly white students and I learned very little. I could already read when I got there; I learned some math but that was about it. Most of my knowledge came from the encyclopedia. What we call "education" mainly has to do with socializing children. Knowledge attained in the process is incidental.</i><br /><br />The socialist "socialization" agenda goes further than that.<br /><br />Remember, educational "peer socialization" did not exist until after World War II. Before then, public education was mostly education. Sure it was elitist, racist, fascist, and right-wing ... but it was education.<br /><br />In 1945 or so, educrats looked to the devastation in postwar Europe, and believed that it could have been prevented if young natural leader-types <i>of all social classes</i> basically got their own way from an early age.<br /><br />That way, there could be no potential Hitlers, Lenins, or Stalins in America. No frustrated and disgruntled fuhrers <i>with followers</i> would pop up from the lower classes, and overturn society. It was OK if the malcontents were smart or otherwise successful, just as long as they couldn't inspire the masses to revolt.<br /><br />So basically children in schools were grouped by age only, with any segregation by race, class, intelligence, or talent strongly discouraged. The natural leaders were allowed free rein over the other students, with minimal discipline or supervision by the adults. These leaders (or alpha males, as Whiskey would say) were the unofficial police, keeeping the mobs in order. Of course, their idea of "order" was not quite the same as the teachers', but at least it was some order, and they never directly threatened the teachers or other adults.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-8799485106191213232010-03-27T12:50:11.438-07:002010-03-27T12:50:11.438-07:00OT, but this article confirms Steve's theory t...OT, but this article confirms Steve's theory that republicans can still win elections if they concentrate on winning the white vote. It also shows they don't need McCain's Big Tent.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?storyID=915922&category=OPINION" rel="nofollow"><i>White Men Shun Democrats</i></a><br /><br />Excerpt: <i>Millions of white men who voted for Barack Obama are walking away from the Democratic Party, and it appears increasingly likely that they'll take the midterms elections in November with them. Their departure could well lead to a GOP landslide on a scale not seen since 1994.</i>Sad Americannoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-27279653776403845672010-03-27T10:13:10.380-07:002010-03-27T10:13:10.380-07:00Video camera technology has long been adequate to ...Video camera technology has long been adequate to be placed in <br />p u b l i c school classrooms<br />full time. Random snippets of a teacher's classroom over the period of two weeks would "tell the whole story" of the degree of learning opportunities being generated and if such opportunities were being generated, the responsiveness capabilities of the various students. It would also indicate the general paucity of spontaneous--genuinely <br />e l e c t i v e--social interactions between Whites and Blacks. For the most part, IF parents viewed for, say, 60 minutes the snippets gathered over two weeks, a special School Board meeting would be demanded and if held would require police presence to preserve order. The NEA and school superintendents would burn down the buildings before they would permit such video tape exposure of <br />p u b l i c education. As someone having spent hundreds of hours observing students in classrooms ( entering and leaving to the extent that when I entered no one noticed--thus, observing a business as usual classroom ) I affirm there is some remarkably good teaching (rewarded no better that poor teaching upon the basis of socialistic, unionized salary schedules ), but overall, it is, and has been, a progressively accumulating catastrophe One possible ameliorating possibility is to structure by law and especially by public financing of education, complementary relationships between public schools and homeschooling efforts within the school district. This does not have to be either/or. Many students can spend three hours a day in home schooling and three hours a day at public school.<br />Video applications at home would be a safeguard and inasmuch as schooling is mandated legally, there is a compelling state interest in meaningful accountability. A great many homes are not up to home schooling.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-27430390562951943372010-03-27T04:48:10.164-07:002010-03-27T04:48:10.164-07:00I've tutored one kid and am currently tutoring...I've tutored one kid and am currently tutoring another (both for free, both sons of friends)<br /><br />the idea was that I'd tutor in math, but I get involved across the curriculum. Faced with a kid who has to, eg write a sonnet for next Tuesday, I can end up being a bit of a parent substitute<br /><br />and sometimes a teacher presents a topic as a bunch of rules and ignores the ideas. This frustrates intelligent kidsFelixMnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-6992857354912274162010-03-27T04:40:40.285-07:002010-03-27T04:40:40.285-07:00Jody, check the resumes of major league managers a...Jody, check the resumes of major league managers and you'll see former catchers are vastly overrepresented. Check current major league rosters and see how many catchers are way over the average age of major leaguers in general. You rarely find a good team with a young, inexperienced catcher, and those teams will almost always have a veteran pitching staff. Catchers are the thinkers on the field, and you see old pros like Jason Varitek still playing, not because of his pitiful bat, but because of his unparalleled management of games and pitchers.<br /><br />John, the bottom of the pyramid is made up of large groups of specialists. The lefty relief pitcher that only pitchers to lefty hitters, the late-inning defensive guy that plays 5 positions, etc.<br /><br />Thucydides, my only problem with James and the rest of the Sabermetrics geeks is there's no accounting for the umpire factor. Maddux was a good pitcher, and was made even better by getting the slider 6 inches outside called a strike because, hey, he's Maddux. How frustrating it must have been for pitchers to throw a great pitch to Wade Boggs with 2 strikes and not get the call because, hey, he's Wade Boggs and if he didn't swing it must have been a ball. David Ortiz is such a whiner at the plate that with some umps it seems his strike zone goes from ankle to helmet!<br /><br />And like lower IQ students in education, the physically-challenged ballplayer, like shrimpy, slow Dustin Pedroia, can only successfully compete with the gifted athletes like Alex Rodriguez<br />by working their asses off. And like education, any good coaching that Pedroia has received has a much more measurable impact than it would on A-Rod.<br /><br />BrutusAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-56518748796287264832010-03-27T01:32:55.776-07:002010-03-27T01:32:55.776-07:00That's a good call about black American catche...That's a good call about black American catchers Jody- do we have to go back to Roy Campanella? If so, wow.....<br /><br />Wait- Charles Johnson- Marlins and Orioles was really good for short time and Russel Martin is half<br /><br /><br />Dan in DCAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-56100480276908352862010-03-27T00:19:36.726-07:002010-03-27T00:19:36.726-07:00Tracking works for kids, but agitators and many pa...<i>Tracking works for kids, but agitators and many parents don't like it because it reveals differences in students' innate abilities.</i> --anonymous<br /><br />It's not only the left which opposes tracking. <br /><br />When Al Gore and his gang cooked up "Goals 2000", its Minnesota incarnation was called "Profiles in Learning", and included something approximating German children's early division into academic and industrial streams. <br /><br />From the reaction of the local educational right, you'd think that Erich Honecker and his Stasi had crossed the St Croix from East Berlin... excuse me, <i>Berlin, Hauptstadt der DDR</i>.<br /><br />This probably reflects the racial and class homogeneity of the state. Many suburban schools have a demographic profile something like 90% white, with 2.5% each of blacks, Asians, Hispanics and American Indians. The minority effect is trivial (and conveniently divided-- their diversity is our strength!), and there are few rich or poor whites. So the whole scheme conjures up an alien, Prussian conspiracy to create division where none exists.<br /><br />Yet in Louisiana, so I'm told, tracking is as mainstream as apple pie, or rather crayfish étouffée. Local conditions make a huge difference in how things are perceived.Reg Cæsarnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-78704167745159178392010-03-26T23:43:55.469-07:002010-03-26T23:43:55.469-07:00But, once we adjust for race, what have we learned...<i>But, once we adjust for race, what have we learned over the years about what works in education? </i><br /><br /><b>What doesn't work:</b> the last 200 years of progressive theorizing and the resulting pseudoexperimentation.<br /><br /><b>What did:</b> the 3000+ years of classical education, and genuine experimentation, that preceded it.<br /><br />You'd think dozens of centuries of trial-and-error might have something to teach us. <br /><br />Consider: our classically-educated Founding Fathers could write a Constitution. Our progressively-educated moderns can't even <i>read</i> it.Reg Cæsarnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-48462375773646124672010-03-26T22:29:40.422-07:002010-03-26T22:29:40.422-07:00Re: Cost of tutoring
Continuing with the cost of ...Re: Cost of tutoring<br /><br />Continuing with the cost of tutoring. If 30x for huge improvement is too expensive, then what about RGH's assertion that 1 hour of tutoring equals about 5 hours of classroom instruction?<br /><br />Today, one teacher teaches 30 kids * 30 hours/week = 900 learner-hours per week. If RGH is right, then 900 classroom hours equals 180 tutoring hours. Let's assume each tutor can provide 30 hours per week of tutoring (they still have to have prep time).<br /><br />It takes six paid tutors in one-on-one sessions, or two paid tutors in one-on-three sessions, to equal the educational value of one classroom teacher with 30 kids. (It's not really tutoring if you work with more than three kids at a time.)<br /><br />That's a losing proposition for your school budget if you spend double or triple the money and end up with the same performance.<br /><br />Maybe there's a way to apply tutoring and spend somewhat more money -- say 5x -- to have somewhat improved education.Steve Setzerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05569769764170714158noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-40637113751615432352010-03-26T22:19:00.349-07:002010-03-26T22:19:00.349-07:00Re: Bloom's research
In the research cited by...Re: Bloom's research<br /><br />In the research cited by Bloom, the tutored kids and the classroom kids both received 11 instructional periods over a 3 week period.<br /><br /><a href="http://web.mit.edu/bosworth/MacData/afs.course/5/5.95/readings/bloom-two-sigma.pdf" rel="nofollow">The 2 Sigma Problem</a><br /><br />So yeah, a kid getting one-on-one tutoring for 11 hours will do better than a kid getting 30-on-one teaching for 11 hours. If we spent 30 times as much money on teachers, we could raise everyone's performance by two (current) standard deviations. <br /><br />Is that worth it? Maybe it is. What would be the economic impact if over half of Americans performed like geniuses, and 95% were above the current average?Steve Setzerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05569769764170714158noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-70586145100711189972010-03-26T21:40:24.779-07:002010-03-26T21:40:24.779-07:00#1: Students who work hard at a subject generally ...#1: Students who work hard at a subject generally do so because they like the subject, and they generally like the subject because they are good at the subject. It is therefore difficult (and often fruitless) to urge weak students to work hard at a subject they know they are not good at.<br /><br />#2: It is impossible to generate an interest among students in a subject they are not equipped to understand.<br /><br />#3: The level of instruction in a given course shouldn't necessarily be aimed at the very brightest students in the class, but gearing instruction and assignments toward the abilities of those at the threshold between the top and second quartiles of the class is probably about right.<br /><br />#4: If you can't learn to read, write, add, subtract, multiply, and divide by the sixth grade, you won't have learned to by the eight grade, nor by the twelth grade either.<br /><br />#5: Somewhere around 12 percent of the American student population is genuinely equipped to do university-level work. And out of this population, some will fail or barely scrape by due to factors beyond their intelligence or educational preparation.<br /><br />#6: The shortcomings and wasteful expenditures of our educational system result not from lack of understanding about how students learn, but rather from political and social pressures which we dare not refuse.Black Seahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16347464061061628147noreply@blogger.com