There are multiple confounds, notably that schools for black and low income students schools stayed virtual longer and the article does not mention any multivariate analysis that looks both at socio-economic factors and prior individual student standing.
That said, it would hardly be surprising if remote learning hit students with a less stable home learning environment harder than it did students with a more stable and less interruption prone environment available. And the results are consistent with that outcome, are they not? It'd be interesting to look at high performing low income students and seeing how they fared. I believe your book mentioned air conditioning as a somewhat impactful intervention and this seems similar.
This doesn't conteadict Freddie's point, just wanted to point out that there is preliminary evidence that while remote learning depressed outcomes across the board that it was especially terrible for poor minority students who were already lagging behind their middle class peers.
I guess we missed out on a perfect opportunity to put Freddie's theory to the test.
We should have made the 'smart' kids suffer through remote learning, and let all the other kids attend school in person. This may have actually closed the achievement gap.
I think we disagree on a lot of the politics but this point has been an epiphany to me. Once you see, or maybe should say accept, this pattern the world makes a lot more sense. It’s like you suddenly have the right encryption key.
And although I (think I) disagree with your political believes I think we share the interest in a decent society where the place of your crib is not your destiny. I do think we need incentives to get the competent to go the extra mile to further society but we should reduce the ceiling and use the excess to improve the lives of the others. But above all, we should get rid of the corrosive identity politics driven by people that seem to not have even a remote clue about statistics.
This doesn't disprove Freddie's argument in any way (if anything, it strengthens it), but you could replace the word "schools" in the last sentence with a lot of other stuff and it'd still hold.
Instead of a bloated and mostly useless Department of Education (thanks Jimmy C), let's have a bloated but useful Department of Handicapper General (DOHG) to start cracking down on smart and/or hard working students.
But if we acknowledge inherent differences, certain groups would only longer be able to get money for ineffective programs!!! We might even have to eliminate affirmative action.... oh, well.
Not every person has the ability to be a brain surgeon. Why do we insist on forcing college prep on kids that can't handle it? Let's get them skills they can use and get them jobs.
Oh, and 15 years ago I had a long conversation with the head of remote learning for a major university, who had been in the field for 30 years. He freely admitted it was a failure. He said that for long term learning retention, remote was horrible. "A hungover frat boy who comes to class after an all night bender who didn't read the assigned work will learn more long term than the most diligent remote student. There is just something about being in the same classroom as the teacher."
1) every individual has their own unique achievement level, and
2) where you live and the type of schools you attend (especially early on) can readily affect your achievement level.
Also, both of these things can be further altered by individual drive and determination...so perhaps a third factor. What is unclear to me is how much personal drive can close the gap on differing education qualities. Something tells me it can do a lot, but rarely completely make up for it in any substantial way. I could be wrong though, this is just my brain meanderings.
Whether or not it’s your position, Freddie, some have read into you that only relative performance affects economic outcomes and so it’s the only kind that matters. This is probably true in the small, but in the large it really is the case that a better educated population can sustain a more advanced society with higher paying opportunities for more people. Conversely, pandemic learning loss is perhaps not a factor in social mobility, but still a factor in our overall prosperity.
"You can't learn Algebra if no one teaches it to you"
I think they were actually going to try this at some school in San Francisco, in order to close the achievement gap. One of those articles that as I was reading it I thought I might be having a stroke or something. As you said, just make sure no one can run fast, that'll solve it!
I’ve worked in public schools for the past 18 years, and I can honestly state it’s never been so nuts as it is now. I have always been a big supporter of Freddie’s views on education, and loved the Cult of Smart. But I am honestly wistful for the bad old days of believing that every child can succeed, as compared to the woke pessimism I see around me.
Since the pandemic, my district has become obsessed with DEI to the point of distraction.
I have been to nearly 20 hours of DEI in services, and 0 on providing remedial math and literacy instruction. I have been provided hours of pre-made lessons on racial and gender identity, but have struggled to get my principal to authorize an order for a reading curriculum that addresses the 6 components of literacy.
My district has been very conscious in adopting activist language, but it’s all window dressing. Our head of Special Education opened the year by committing to end White Supremacy, then transitioned seamlessly to how we would address this by using standardized naming conventions when uploading signature pages from IEP meetings.
I’m on board with everything in this column, but for the love of God we need to teach kids to read, and I am honestly afraid to express this opinion at my job
Maybe this is my own bugaboo but I think you’d get less pushback on this topic if instead of saying, “It’s just that not everyone has equal potential,” you said, “It’s just that not everyone has equal potential TO SUCCEED AT SCHOOL.” Perhaps it should be obvious because your writing on this issue is always in the context of schooling but I think talking about talent, intelligence, and potential in the abstract without specifying that you are referring to a particular type of ability is what makes people queasy. That slight caveat or disclaimer might clarify your stance.
The reform of education should begin with a simple and straightforward mission statement:
"To sufficiently prepare each student for the next step in their path to be become economically self-sufficient adults."
Even the arts and humanities would benefit from this focus. It can incorporate the broader considerations for developing creativity, humility, empathy and emotional intelligence... but everything with a focus of getting the kids to become well-functioning adults that can provide for themselves.
If education can not deliver on that, then it is not providing societal value as education... and should be labeled as something else.
While I agree, completely actually, that each child is an individual and that a school and teachers cannot be held accountable for whatever genetic or environmental factors might cause variation among students so that there is a "gap," at the same time, our education system is worth less than dirt. While there are good educators, many of them, the school systems are littered with people who are so hopeless, incompetent, and lazy that they would not survive in any other profession, outside maybe politics. The functional literacy rate in this country is ridiculously low (https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaeltnietzel/2020/09/09/low-literacy-levels-among-us-adults-could-be-costing-the-economy-22-trillion-a-year/?sh=7a3115034c90). Schools are so worried about creating "good citizens" and "teaching" kids *what* to think that they don't teach children the basics (reading, writing, arithmetic) and *how* to think. And while I know that many issues contribute to our lousy education system, part of it is the educators. I proofread for a publishing house, and I can tell you that for every book or article you find that works toward reasonable solutions to better educate children in the basics and critical thinking skills, you'll find two more that talk about raising "global citizens" or "responsible citizens" and seven more that whine about why teachers shouldn't be held "accountable." Spend some time reading education journals. You won't look at "education" the same way and you will have little patience for any discussion of "education gaps and failures" that isn't a highly nuanced discussion that makes teachers at least somewhat responsible for the situation.
The main point of this post is entirely correct and I have seen some small number of people make the argument it refutes. It is worth pointing out, however, that the main thrust of most school reformers is not trying to eradicate individual differences in achievement, but raising absolute achievement levels closer to potential.
There are multiple confounds, notably that schools for black and low income students schools stayed virtual longer and the article does not mention any multivariate analysis that looks both at socio-economic factors and prior individual student standing.
That said, it would hardly be surprising if remote learning hit students with a less stable home learning environment harder than it did students with a more stable and less interruption prone environment available. And the results are consistent with that outcome, are they not? It'd be interesting to look at high performing low income students and seeing how they fared. I believe your book mentioned air conditioning as a somewhat impactful intervention and this seems similar.
This doesn't conteadict Freddie's point, just wanted to point out that there is preliminary evidence that while remote learning depressed outcomes across the board that it was especially terrible for poor minority students who were already lagging behind their middle class peers.
I guess we missed out on a perfect opportunity to put Freddie's theory to the test.
We should have made the 'smart' kids suffer through remote learning, and let all the other kids attend school in person. This may have actually closed the achievement gap.
I think we disagree on a lot of the politics but this point has been an epiphany to me. Once you see, or maybe should say accept, this pattern the world makes a lot more sense. It’s like you suddenly have the right encryption key.
And although I (think I) disagree with your political believes I think we share the interest in a decent society where the place of your crib is not your destiny. I do think we need incentives to get the competent to go the extra mile to further society but we should reduce the ceiling and use the excess to improve the lives of the others. But above all, we should get rid of the corrosive identity politics driven by people that seem to not have even a remote clue about statistics.
This doesn't disprove Freddie's argument in any way (if anything, it strengthens it), but you could replace the word "schools" in the last sentence with a lot of other stuff and it'd still hold.
Kinda explains a lot.
Instead of a bloated and mostly useless Department of Education (thanks Jimmy C), let's have a bloated but useful Department of Handicapper General (DOHG) to start cracking down on smart and/or hard working students.
But if we acknowledge inherent differences, certain groups would only longer be able to get money for ineffective programs!!! We might even have to eliminate affirmative action.... oh, well.
Not every person has the ability to be a brain surgeon. Why do we insist on forcing college prep on kids that can't handle it? Let's get them skills they can use and get them jobs.
Oh, and 15 years ago I had a long conversation with the head of remote learning for a major university, who had been in the field for 30 years. He freely admitted it was a failure. He said that for long term learning retention, remote was horrible. "A hungover frat boy who comes to class after an all night bender who didn't read the assigned work will learn more long term than the most diligent remote student. There is just something about being in the same classroom as the teacher."
I think both things are true at the same time.
1) every individual has their own unique achievement level, and
2) where you live and the type of schools you attend (especially early on) can readily affect your achievement level.
Also, both of these things can be further altered by individual drive and determination...so perhaps a third factor. What is unclear to me is how much personal drive can close the gap on differing education qualities. Something tells me it can do a lot, but rarely completely make up for it in any substantial way. I could be wrong though, this is just my brain meanderings.
Whether or not it’s your position, Freddie, some have read into you that only relative performance affects economic outcomes and so it’s the only kind that matters. This is probably true in the small, but in the large it really is the case that a better educated population can sustain a more advanced society with higher paying opportunities for more people. Conversely, pandemic learning loss is perhaps not a factor in social mobility, but still a factor in our overall prosperity.
"You can't learn Algebra if no one teaches it to you"
I think they were actually going to try this at some school in San Francisco, in order to close the achievement gap. One of those articles that as I was reading it I thought I might be having a stroke or something. As you said, just make sure no one can run fast, that'll solve it!
I’ve worked in public schools for the past 18 years, and I can honestly state it’s never been so nuts as it is now. I have always been a big supporter of Freddie’s views on education, and loved the Cult of Smart. But I am honestly wistful for the bad old days of believing that every child can succeed, as compared to the woke pessimism I see around me.
Since the pandemic, my district has become obsessed with DEI to the point of distraction.
I have been to nearly 20 hours of DEI in services, and 0 on providing remedial math and literacy instruction. I have been provided hours of pre-made lessons on racial and gender identity, but have struggled to get my principal to authorize an order for a reading curriculum that addresses the 6 components of literacy.
My district has been very conscious in adopting activist language, but it’s all window dressing. Our head of Special Education opened the year by committing to end White Supremacy, then transitioned seamlessly to how we would address this by using standardized naming conventions when uploading signature pages from IEP meetings.
I’m on board with everything in this column, but for the love of God we need to teach kids to read, and I am honestly afraid to express this opinion at my job
Maybe this is my own bugaboo but I think you’d get less pushback on this topic if instead of saying, “It’s just that not everyone has equal potential,” you said, “It’s just that not everyone has equal potential TO SUCCEED AT SCHOOL.” Perhaps it should be obvious because your writing on this issue is always in the context of schooling but I think talking about talent, intelligence, and potential in the abstract without specifying that you are referring to a particular type of ability is what makes people queasy. That slight caveat or disclaimer might clarify your stance.
The reform of education should begin with a simple and straightforward mission statement:
"To sufficiently prepare each student for the next step in their path to be become economically self-sufficient adults."
Even the arts and humanities would benefit from this focus. It can incorporate the broader considerations for developing creativity, humility, empathy and emotional intelligence... but everything with a focus of getting the kids to become well-functioning adults that can provide for themselves.
If education can not deliver on that, then it is not providing societal value as education... and should be labeled as something else.
While I agree, completely actually, that each child is an individual and that a school and teachers cannot be held accountable for whatever genetic or environmental factors might cause variation among students so that there is a "gap," at the same time, our education system is worth less than dirt. While there are good educators, many of them, the school systems are littered with people who are so hopeless, incompetent, and lazy that they would not survive in any other profession, outside maybe politics. The functional literacy rate in this country is ridiculously low (https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaeltnietzel/2020/09/09/low-literacy-levels-among-us-adults-could-be-costing-the-economy-22-trillion-a-year/?sh=7a3115034c90). Schools are so worried about creating "good citizens" and "teaching" kids *what* to think that they don't teach children the basics (reading, writing, arithmetic) and *how* to think. And while I know that many issues contribute to our lousy education system, part of it is the educators. I proofread for a publishing house, and I can tell you that for every book or article you find that works toward reasonable solutions to better educate children in the basics and critical thinking skills, you'll find two more that talk about raising "global citizens" or "responsible citizens" and seven more that whine about why teachers shouldn't be held "accountable." Spend some time reading education journals. You won't look at "education" the same way and you will have little patience for any discussion of "education gaps and failures" that isn't a highly nuanced discussion that makes teachers at least somewhat responsible for the situation.
The main point of this post is entirely correct and I have seen some small number of people make the argument it refutes. It is worth pointing out, however, that the main thrust of most school reformers is not trying to eradicate individual differences in achievement, but raising absolute achievement levels closer to potential.